Hard Drives Offer Rich Pickings

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17827562

A word of warning to the wise.

Watchdog finds undeleted data on second-hand disk drives

One in 10 second-hand hard drives still contain the original user's personal information, suggests an investigation by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

It purchased devices from auction sites such as eBay and computer fairs.

Of the 200 hard disks collected, 11% contained personal information.

At least two of the drives had enough information to enable someone to steal the former owners' identities, the watchdog said.

A separate survey by the ICO indicated that one in 10 people who had disposed of a mobile phone, computer or laptop had not wiped the device.

21% of users now chose to sell their old mobile phones, computers and laptops rather than get rid of them, it suggested. It added that the trend was even more common among 18-24 year-olds among whom the figure rose to 31%.

"We live in a world where personal and company information is a highly valuable commodity," said Information Commissioner Christopher Graham.

"It is important that people do everything they can to stop their details from falling into the wrong hands."

Soft touch
 
For its investigation, the ICO employed computer forensic firm NCC Group to source and scour around 200 hard drives, 20 memory sticks and 10 mobile phones.

Nearly half (48%) contained some information, 11% of which was deemed personal information.

Among the 34,000 files found were scanned bank statements, passports, information on previous driving offences and some medical details.

Four of the hard drives came from organisations rather than individuals and contained information about employees and clients, including health and financial details.

All four organisations had been contacted, and had subsequently taken action to securely erase data on old equipment, the ICO said.

One - Safe and Secure Insurances Services Limited - has agreed to introduce further improvements.

"People are in danger of becoming a soft touch for online fraudsters," warned Mr Graham.

"Many people will presume that pressing the delete button on a computer file means that it is gone forever. However this information can easily be recovered."

There are two ways to make sure your data can't be recovered.

(A) In the case of a faulty hard drive use a hammer on it to destroy it before you dispose of it.

(B) To correctly clean a working hard drive use software that does multiple overwrites as it erases. "Tune Up Shredder" is the program that I use. I set it to do triple overwrites, but there are other programs that will do the job just as well.

[White Stripes]

(B) To correctly clean a working hard drive use software that does multiple overwrites as it erases. "Tune Up Shredder" is the program that I use. I set it to do triple overwrites, but there are other programs that will do the job just as well.

dd if=/dev/urandom of=<harddrive>
dd if=/dev/zero of=<harddrive>

(in that order) ... the newly zero filled drive will need to be repartitioned before os of choice can be installed...

...im not quite sure about that one in ten thing... every old comp and cell phone ive come across in second hand stores still has the original owners info... could care less about it... unless there is data on the hdd that is mandatory for the computers operation i wipe it completely clean... others arent so 'honest' ....

(example of mandatory data would be the cmos setup stored at the beginning of the hdd in old compaq systems or otherwise unfindable device drivers and setup/format utilities for MFM harddrives)

[silicon_toad2000]

I remember seeing an article some time ago of a similar nature in a business journal about second hand photocopiers.
The hard drives in second hand photocopiers can contain some very sensitive information if not treated properly.

Maybe before you get rid of a photopcopier, copy a few reams of blank paper at high res.