When you empty the recycle bin, where does it go?

[Moloko_Plus]

Im thoroughly convinced that there is a big dump in cyberspace where all of our deleted stuff goes, because when you throw out trash, it goes somewhere. What about when i delete a 4.5 gb dvd iso? It very well doesn't just vanish into thin air.
Ive been told that i'm crazy and when you delete something it just Erases itself, like running a magnet across a floppy disk that has information on it. Personally I think this cyberspace-dump is 10 times the size of jupiter and has more viruses then the east river in NYC..What happens if this containment center gets so bloated and contains too many 1's and 0's of thrown away bytes of "wifey001.jpg" and etc. that it just bursts, creating a total catastrophe even microsoft can't buy its way out of?
If you ask me, the same people who think there's no big-dump in cyberspace are the same ones who think snuff movies are bogus..But eventually it comes to light, and kicks all our asses back to the days of BBS's and C64's and the Altair 88's, leaving our video game-dependent asses thanking god for Atari 2600 once again. Doomsday is near...That is all.

[babyboo]

The data is actually still there until it is overwritten. The space the data occupies is simply flagged as available and it is no longer accessible via Explorer. You can, however, retrive the data using data recovery tools so long as not a single byte of the data has been overwritten

[lordsmurf]

When you "del" or "empty" the files, the reference is deleted. Nothing more, noting less. It can be overwritten. Anything not overwritten still exists, and recovery tools can see it.

Even magnets won't always erase a disk platter. Many hard drives have magnets in them! Betcha' didn't know that!

Burn it. In a big fire. Only way to delete for sure. Melt it all the way to a lump of crap.

[MOVIEGEEK]

"Doomsday is near...That is all."

In that case I better get my affairs in order.
Is your name chicken little?