Shred Agent

The review of the top ten shredders (return to file shredders comparison table)

Surprisingly enough, this utility brings the shredding software to the whole new level. This program got it's own way of shredding. While other programs annoy you by necessity of manual files and folders selection, the Shred Agent does it all for you in a background mode.

When the utility is on it minimizes itself in the system tray and doesn't bother you at all. Instead, as you work as usual with your software it wipes both trash and sensitive data which that software creates: temporary files, different duplications, cookies, links...anything. What's more important? There's no need to look for this data on the system and no risk of deleting important files such as .dll files.

At first, I thought this program is only capable of deleting the files that are left behind by programs like MS Office, for instance and that it can't delete the specific files such as actual .doc file. But actually deleting the specific files is easier than ever. As soon as you press delete or shift + delete, Shred Agent wipes this file on a hardware level. It's neat.

The disadvantage is that Shred Agent is not quite configurable. Users can't choose the shredding method or number of overwrites. It has the so-called filter though where you can select which folders/files can't be deleted or, on contrary have to be deleted.

Mostly users' feedback can be outlined as positive except for those who didn't understand that it can delete the specific files.

Shred Agent is innovative and easy-to-use, that's why I recommend it. It's available for $60.00 at http://www.shredagent.com/. Price seems to be pretty high, but it is worth it.

• What to learn about other popular file shredders? Then return to file shredders comparison table.