Frankly, data is almost always recoverable to some degree, but with the proper precautions you can at least make sure that Joe Shmoe who bought your hard drive from your garage sale can’t access your Quicken financial information.įirst, you should understand that deleting files, and even formatting your hard drive, are not sufficient. That drive contained information on 31,000 credit card numbers.īefore you get rid of an old hard drive or computer, you need to make sure the data on the drive is impossible to recover. He purchased another drive on eBay that had previously been owned by a medical center. Garfinkel was able to purchase an old ATM machine hard drive on eBay that contained 827 unique account PIN numbers. The old computer or equipment can often be difficult to dispose of because nobody else wants obsolete equipment either.īut, whether you give your computer equipment away, sell it on eBay or just set it at the curb with the rest of your trash, you need to take appropriate precautions to ensure your personal and confidential data does not get passed on.Ī study by Simson Garfinkel, author of Database Nation, found that drives purchased on eBay routinely contain sensitive or confidential data. When it comes to disposing of your computer system, or a hard drive from your computer system, you need to be just as diligent.Ĭomputers continue to become obsolete within a year or two, maybe three, and many people upgrade their existing computers or buy an entirely new one. They want to make sure that nobody can pick up their trash and gain information about them.
Many people use some sort of paper shredder to turn all of these kinds of documents into confetti before throwing them out. Bank statements, utility bills, magazines, pre-approved credit card solicitations and even other junk mail all contain clues about you. People throw out all kinds of things in the trash that can be used to collect information about them and potentially steal their identity. Erasing Your Personal Data Before You Sell or Trash Your Hard Drive
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