It's a chilly Border Saturday at the Pit, a solid holding paddock for abandoned computer parts at the Needham, Massachusetts, town wasteyard. Nearby, three locals wait with patience in their idling cars.
An SUV pulls up. Driver Jesse James Curtin grabs an old PC from the backwards and puts IT into the Pit alongside opposite Cathode-ray tube monitors and old computer chassis. Slowly the another men exit their cars and walk toward the discarded computer–cardinal with a screwdriver in script.
For these PC scavengers, the Pit is a golden mine for store chips, processors, and other components that they use to build PCs on the low-cost. But they also routinely find something other: business sector and in the flesh data that prior owners have left connected throwaway hard drives.
"[Happening] well-nig every hard drive I pull, I'll find a return or a resume," says David Burns, who describes himself atomic number 3 a Needham regular.
The lesson for PC users? Old unvoiced drives don't forever die–or fade away. Often they are salvaged and reused in other computers. And when that happens, the data and sometimes-grimy secrets of previous users co-occur with them.
Properly sanitizing a arduous drive earlier giving away or reselling a reckoner requires only a small investment of time and an inexpensive or free disk-erasing tool (see " Data Humourous 101″). But umpteen people don't even do negligible cleanup.
Data Galore
An examination of ten used hard drives we bought operating theatre salvaged in the Boston area disclosed a wealth of thin-skinned data. On all but one of them, we found data, including classified lin, medical examination, and assemblage records; Social Security, credit card, and bank account numbers; e-mail; and even pornography.
Most of the information was easy pickings–even on quartet drives whose previous owners had attempted to erase data, either by deleting files and emptying the recycle bin or by reformatting the phonograph recording–measures that simply conceal the data from the operating system of rules. Not astonishingly, the equipment's former owners were shocked to learn that strangers had accessed their info.
"I went through my PC and thought I had thoroughly deleted everything," Curtin said of his old TriGem 486.
A Boston computer shop oversubscribed us a disc drive previously owned away an comptroller–and crammed with four years' worth of his clients' paysheet and tax information and employee Elite group Security Numbers. The accountant same that his nephew, who worked at a computer store, had far the drive while upgrading his hoar computer single months sooner. The accountant said that he never thought to ask his nephew what had get along of the rocky drive.
Similarly, a Salvation Army store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sold us a Personal computer that had once belonged to an attorney; IT still contained bank account numbers, an active America Online account (and a stored password), and draft legal documents happening its disk drive.
"I most certainly never expected my personal information would ever be more than antitrust that–physical," said the attorney. He said his firm's IT advisor had promised to properly destroy the information.
Our samples confirmed the findings of a study conducted earlier this year at the Old Colony Bring of Technology. Two graduate students, Simson Garfinkel (who is too a prolific technology writer) and Abhi Shelat, bought 158 hard drives on EBay and from online shops. Of 129 drives that worked, 69 had recoverable files and 49 contained personal info, including 3700 charge card numbers, medical information, and pornography. Sole 12 of the usable drives had been right purged.
"This is a serious problem," Shelat says. Businesses become under fire when they unwittingly share sensitive information. And individuals leave themselves open to identity theft, a possibly destructive crime that the Authorities Trade Commission received well-nigh 162,000 complaints about in 2002–almost double the 2001 tot up.
Resurrected Drives
Tossing your your old drive out with the trash is no more guarantee that information technology–and your data–leave determine a quiet resting space in a landfill. And scavengers the like those at the Needham Pit are only set forth of the picture. As more towns and cities ban PCs from their landfills, businesses are cashing in.
Computer Salve of New England collects old PCs and cannibalizes them for parts that information technology then sells. Similarly, the city of Cambridge pays a recycling company named Onyx Environmental Services to haul off PCs left for curbside pickup. Onyx salvages the parts and resells them.
Research firm Gartner Dataquest reports that businesses and individuals took about 150,000 hard drives out of service in 2002. Meanwhile, reportable incidents of data security compromised by improper disposal of unwanted PCs have increased exponentially, says Gartner research director Frances O'Brien.
"Companies don't reckon twice about giving rocky drives a simple reformat and handing the PCs out to employees, charities, or whoever other throne save them a buck happening disposal costs," O'Brien says.
Even when people reformat the hard drive, a motivated sleuth can retrieve data exploitation tools such as Norton SystemWorks' Magnetic disk Editor or the free Record Investigator.
We did this along a drive purchased at the Super Computer Sales agreement (a traveling computer fair), and uncovered inquiry, e-mail messages, and a log of Web sites visited by employees at Fairfax Financial Holdings of Ontario, Canada.
"IT shouldn't have happened," aforesaid Brad Martin, Fairfax's vice chairman of investor dealings. "We are releas to make a point that something like this ne'er happens again."
Another used hard platter we bought at the information processing system beautiful had no OS. Just we identified the previous owner–and disentangled 20MB of information documenting activities unprintable in this magazine publisher.
Being able to recover deleted data lavatory be efficacious: Ask anyone who's ever accidentally trashed a file. Hard push back data can helper arrest criminals, says Tom Galligan, owner of Electronic Evidence Recovery of Tiverton, Rhode Island.
But honest PC users have a legitimate interest in destroying data when they discard an old PC. Curtin wishes He had been more careful with his nonagenarian drive. "I'll never make that mistake twice," he says.
Data Killing 101: Tools and Tips
The only sure room to demolish data on your embarrassing disk is to overwrite information technology. Present are some programs and tips that bequeath avail you cause the job right.
Access Data's $40 WipeDrive creates a floppy thrill disk that you use to overwrite your hard drive–operative system included.
LSoft Technologies' Active@ KillDisk, a freed DOS utility, also overwrites information but lacks extras such As a tool around to verify that a disk has been wiped clean.
To purge respective files, Symantec's $70 Norton SystemWorks 2003 includes a utility known as WipeInfo.
Two free options you can try are Sure Delete and Eraser.
Low-flat formatting does destruct data happening a crusade. The routine, designed to return a strong disc to its manufacturing plant-issue condition, is typically performed in a DOS environment, and Microsoft does not make or provide tools for low-level formats. However, to the highest degree hard magnetic disc manufacturers ply low-level formatting tools at their WWW sites. To identify your hard disk vendor from within Windows, go to the Device Manager window and double-click Harrow drives.
Note that performing a high-unwavering data format along a drive using the utility included with Windows obliterates practically none of the previous data.
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