[Dana]

Tonight on my local 6:00 news, there was a tidbit on computers thrown in the trash or given to thrift stores.
They were able to retrieve a lot of information from a 'supposed' cleaned hard drive including income tax returns and other personal documents via a data recovery firm who didn't even try too hard...
It's suggested that if you turf your computer, you remove the hard drive and damage it, same as you would if you were throwing out credit cards.

[m3talc0re]

Never heard of that before huh? I remember reading something about it a while back about a bank that sold all their old computers to people for cheap since they bought new PC's for the bank. Well some people got into the hdd using a recovery program (there's even freeware and shareware apps) and got a bunch of people's critical information, including ss#'s, bank account numbers, everything.

However, if you do have a hard drive that has things like that on it that you don't want recovered, there are a couple of options.
a) You remove the harddrive and burn it. Unless you've got confidential government files or something on it, medium rare will do. However, data centers that specialize in recovering data can actually still recover that data (surprising ain't it :P). So you have to make sure it's well done and burned to a crisp.

Or

b) You can buy an application from Norton (I am sure there are others, maybe even freeware or shareware apps) that will erase the hdd and right zero's to it and that will make the data impossible to recover while preserving the hdd and allowing it to continue its life which can be a good thing.

There are organizations that take donated (I think some will even give you some kind of incentive like small cash amount or a tax write off) computers and give them to less fortunate families who can't afford a computer so that they can have a computer for browsing the web and such. You can find that information in this Google search results page.

[StarLab]

No problem here. I generally use Hard Drives until they die. I don't believe I have ever sold or given away a Hard Drive.

Love your first solution. What's for dinner? Roasted Hard Drive, garnished with ribbon cable! ;)

[Dana]

Oh I've heard of it...I just thought when I saw a news serial on it that it was an interesting topic for a new thread :)
People need to be aware that others can find out a LOT about them from their computers...some stuff I'm sure they'd rather people not know...

[m3talc0re]

I didn't know if you knew about it or not, but I put it up there for anyone who don't know about it :P

[Dana]

oh no, you misunderstood me (stick your tongue back in, lol)...I found your post very informative but was referring to your first line only, hehee..

[m3talc0re]

Lmfao, I love that in the parenthesis. That's sig material there.

[Dana]

lol, that's the Mother in me, I guess telling people not to stick out their tongue.
OMG!! I have turned into MY MOTHER! lol

well...It's an honour and a delight to be featured in your sig line, metalcore

[lisah746]

Ah, the implications of sticking your tongue back in. I shall remain typeless about them so don't even bother to ask. lol

This is a very intresting topic for me. I once was given a bunch of hdds from the school I learned mainframe programming from. They were a bunch of 1 and 2 mg hdd and they had just upgraded their hdds. They were going to throw them out and I asked if I could have them instead.

I was surprised at the wealth of information left behind on those drives.They did not even bother erasing most of them. If I was a not nice person I could have taken peoples stored passwords and used them for unethical purposes. I just went ahead and erased everything and then turned around and sold them for like $100 each. lol

Since then I have used diskdeleter pro by bluesoft.com to erase any hdds that I may be throwing away or selling.

[Dana]

Yes, most people are genuinely honest and would do just what you did.
On a similar subject:
I've always been really careful about work computers...

I warned an old colleague repeatedly who never took my warnings about chatting too freely at work. She and another colleague have very candid conversations on Lotus Sametime about many things including how much they despise their boss (with name calling and cruelty, etc.). She waved her hand at me when I reminded her of the information policy documents she signed knowing that the upper mgmt. could pull any info or record her calls, e-mails, etc.
I hope it doesn't come back one day to bite her.


I heard a story once about how a company (quite a few years ago) logged all online chats their employees had at another location and someone read them. They uncovered affairs, stealing and all sorts of other sordid details from these logs. Their employees didn't have a clue that all these details were looked at. People think their bosses don't have time to dig into these details but be aware, some companies do make the time.