Say there was a request that certain files be "securely" deleted (using shred for example) after they are finished being reviewed. However, a user forgot to do that and just used delete followed by emptying the trash.

What kind of delete is going on when the trash is being emptied? Should I be concerned? Is there a way I can wipe the trash area, or take some other preventative measure to make doubly sure these are not recoverable or that I've done reasonable diligence?

Thanks!

Edit: Running Fedora 17 KDE Spin

Unfortunately the file deletion done by emptying the trash is very similar to that done by using the command 'rm'. The exact behaviour in terms of the actual deletion of data is now determined by the file system you are using.

I believe ext3 scrubs areas once (zeros them) when files are deleted - you may wish to double-check that however.

Filesystem is ext4. I was wondering if my next step would have to be some kind of empty space wiper like "sfill" for the trash directory.
It occurs to me that the better security solution may be to have an encrypted filesystem which would avoid this kind of issue. But that would requre a re-install/a bunch of work to set up?

Switching to an encrypted file system, unless you have unallocated space not used by a partition will require a reinstall of your system and depending on the distribution may be difficult to setup.

Unfortunately i'm not familiar with tools to securely erase unused areas of a ext4 disk.