Question: Given the fact `shred` will not be effective on ext3, I wonder what are the available alternatives right now.

```
$ man shred
...

   CAUTION: Note that shred relies on a very  important  assumption:  that
   the  file system overwrites data in place.  This is the traditional way
   to do things, but many modern file system designs do not  satisfy  this
   assumption.   The following are examples of file systems on which shred
   is not effective, or is not guaranteed to be effective in all file sys‐
   tem modes:

   * log-structured or journaled file systems, such as those supplied with
   AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, Ext3, etc.)
...

```

Answer: 
Forget shred (which doesn't work in all cases: no matter what the filesystem is, concurrent activity can throw it off), and encrypt any sensitive file. See these questions:  

[How do I encrypt my home partition?](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1081/how-do-i-encrypt-my-home-partition)  

[How can I easily encrypt a file?](https://askubuntu.com/questions/4796/how-can-i-simply-password-protect-a-file)  

[Is there a FileVault alternative for Ubuntu](https://askubuntu.com/questions/6604/is-there-a-filevault-alternative-for-ubuntu)
As far as I can tell there are no alternatives to shred for journaled file systems. However you can turn your ext3 partition into ext2 temporarily, though it can be a pain. For more information take a look at [this article.](http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/shred_and_secure_delete_tools_wiping_files_partitions_and_disks_gnu_linux)