Your PC is getting a bit long in the tooth, it’s getting slower and slower, and now you understand that your operating system (probably Windows XP) isn’t going to be ‘supported anymore’. Well, the obvious thing is to haul it off to the dump and recycle it – right? Not so fast…
Read this:
Data thieves can use various programs to recover your sensitive files, even if you think you’ve deleted them. Just ask a British man who had to pay 100 pounds to a crook in Latvia to get back his old hard drive, after the crook mailed him a picture showing how he’d recovered his bank statements and a mortgage application. The man had been told earlier by a computer company that his faulty hard drive would be scrubbed when it was replaced [source: Arthur].
In 2009, British security researchers purchased 300 used computers from several countries and then perused the hard drives. They found that one-third of them still contained data from the former owners, including medical records from hospitals, proprietary business documents, and even test-launch information for ground-to-air missiles [source: Lamb].
There are bad guys out there who buy old computers strictly for the purpose of using data recovery tools to extract personal information off of the previous owner’s hard drive. According to a recent study, old hard drives are a huge treasure trove of information for would-be criminals [source: Study].
Even the vendors we know and love might not be as responsible with your information as you’d like. Here’s a rant about Apple repair policies you might find interesting: “…apparently Apple doesn’t care too much about your personal data. Dave Winer wrote about this extensively and notes the same problem.” [source: spylogic]
OK, so what can I do?
Always, always, always remove the hard-drive(s) from your PC before recycling it. Considering that many laptop vendors are making harder to find the hard-drive, let alone remove it, this can be a tedious task. Still, do it! You have no idea where your discarded hardware is going to end up, and as in the stories above, the bad guys REALLY want to get their hands on your data. Don’t make it any easier for them!
Once the hard-drive is removed, you can either smash the smithereens out of it, or ‘slave’ it to your new PC using something like this [docking station or SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter] and run CCleaner and select ‘Tools’, then ‘Drive Wiper’, then ‘Wipe – Entire Drive’. Be sure you choose the drive you REALLY want to clean, then select ‘Simple Overwrite’. Some think more overwrites are better, but the reality is it doesn’t change the result, it just takes a whole lot longer to complete.
This all sounds like a lot of work, and could be. But if you ever had to clean up after an identity theft, you’ll feel a whole lot better about putting the time in up front, or just hand it all over to your trusted tech support guy and zip, zap, boom, it’ll be done in a jiff.
