Disabling 'recent documents' in Ubuntu

To disable, open up a Terminal window by clicking on Application \ Accessories \ Terminal from the top panel menu and enter the following set of commands:

rm ~/.recently-used.xbel

followed by…

touch ~/.recently-used.xbel

…one more (after entering the following command, you will be prompted to enter your password)

sudo chattr +i ~/.recently-used.xbel

Next, clear the Recent Documents list as described above.
Now when you check Places \ Recent Documents again, it should now be greyed out and disabled.
No more displaying "those" recently viewed documents (..aahem).

To explain what occurred to disable Recent Documents using the above set of commands:
We first removed the file recently-used.xbel (located in the root of your Home directory by using the rm command (this file is used to store the list of documents)
Next we re-created the file using the touch command.
Then we changed the attribute of the file to make it inaccessible using the command chattr +i.
If you decide someday that you want to enable displaying of Recent Documents, just run the following command:

sudo chattr -i ~/.recently-used.xbel

The view will remain greyed out and disabled until you access a document, which will cause it to start displaying viewed documents.
Oh yeah, one more thing, when you do enable Recent Documents, all documents that you accessed when it was disabled, will be visible. So make sure you clear them out again….otherwise everyone will be able to see what you were trying to hide in the first place
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