August 14th, 2006
UK Bank Details From Recycled PCs Sold
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Information from recycled PCs sent from the UK to Africa, including banking information, is being sold in West Africa for less than £20 each. These PCs were recycled or donated without having their hard drives wiped.
It discovered that fraudsters in Nigeria were able to find internet banking data stored on recycled PCs sent from the UK to Africa. The information can be found on a PC’s hard disk, which is easy to access if the drive is not wiped before sending. Source: BBC News
Recently I replaced the hard drive on my work laptop with a new one. IT let me do it myself. Part of the process was wiping the old hard drive. It didn’t have anywhere near the info that the hard drives on my home PCs do, but I wiped it anyway.
Tips on wiping your hard drive can be found here.
Mart says:
The best freeware wipe is
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=37015&package_id=65323&release_id=439199
August 14th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
John Corliss says:
The only way to securely wipe an old hard drive is to beat on it with an 8 pound splitting maul until it’s about 1/8″ thick. Then throw it in a fire and burn it for about a half hour.
August 15th, 2006 at 3:46 am