[rooted]

I can't think if a situation rm is safer than rm -f unless you want to have confirmations for each file that's deleted.

I'm a fan of aliasing rm to move files into a trash folder

[tjpick]

it's probably safer to just remember to use mv instead, because there's a very high chance that you'll do the wrong thing on a terminal that doesn't have that alias available.

[wahnfrieden]

Just alias a third command that moves to your trash directory and won't accidentally trigger rm when you're on a new machine.