Removing personal data from a user account without deleting the user account

Wiki ▸ Removing personal data from a user account without deleting the user account

🚧 📝 This is just a notes dump from a recent session. Please don't consider this in any way thorough. You're welcome to add to it, tho! (Open an issue if you do not have edit access to our wiki.)

Delete application data from "inside-out," meaning, erase things in this order:

1. First use the application's interface itself to remove its own data (browser cookies, etc.), then
2. use the file explorer/Finder to remove application's files, then
3. use the file explorer/Finder to delete the application itself.

MacOS notes

1. Delete ~/Library/Caches
   • This can also just be used to reclaim some disk space, it's usually pretty sizable.
2. Delete ~/Library/Preferences/*plists (of relevant applications)
3. Delete ~/Library/Logs
4. Securely delete files from a MacOS machine: rm -rfP ~/.Trash/*
5. Wipe slack space: dd if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/BIGRANDOMFILE bs=4096k || rm -f /tmp/BIGRANDOMFILE
6. Remove login items: System Preferences -> Users and Groups -> Current User -> Login Items tab -> Select the login item and click the remove (-) button.
7. Remove any user specific System Preference Panes: ~/Library/PreferencePanes
8. Remove your personal dictionary by deleting the ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary
9. Remove non-browser application cookies: ~/Library/Cookies
10. Delete old passwords from Keychain Access.app
11. Clear all the "Recent items" menus that you can think of:
    • Apple Menu -> Recent Items -> Clear
    • Finder -> Go -> Recent Folders -> Clear