I don't feel sorry for people such as this that are so foolish with their computer that they wouldn't even think to wipe the hard drive before selling it. It should be obvious that the hard drive is full of lots of private information ranging from passwords and credit card numbers to embarassing photos.

I used to work at a girls school (not that men do any better) and there were posted warnings not to save any personal data to the hard drive because it would be subject to review by staff and would be removed from the computer at the end of each session. I constantly had students and even professors call me up complaining that they'd lost important work they'd been doing. Worse yet, I had the system auto-backup all files to a central server before removing them from the computers, when trying to recover stuff like term papers, I'd often find revealing photos and videos the girls had made of themselves for sharing over the Internet.

I stepped into a local college a while back and stopped to inspect the computer lab and while I was standing there I noticed several girls posting revealing photos of themselves to popular sites.

I wonder how many of these people don't realize that once those photos are out there they can't be hidden again. When they are 70 those photos could very well find their ways to the eyes of their great grand children.

The one person I do feel sorry for was a guy who reported to me that he'd received a phone call from someone that'd bought a refurbished hard drive from the company I worked for. Evidently the drive was dead when he sent it in to be exchanged and the manufacturer (a big name one at that) fixed it and resold it but never bothered to wipe it clean before selling it.

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/424/34185#34185