Before you sell your computer, smash the hard drive
The only surefire way to stop criminals stealing data from secondhand computers is to destroy the hard drive, a study by Which? Computing magazine has warned.
Even though people think they have wiped data from machines before they sell them on auction sites or put them onto rubbish tips, the files remain on the hard drives – and can contain vital information such as bank details and other personal data sufficient for identity theft. They can be recovered using specialist software that is widely available.
The magazine recovered 22,000 "deleted" files from eight computers which it bought from the auction site eBay – demonstrating that normal deletion is insufficient to remove the data.
Criminals source used computers in order to find such useful data, the magazine warned. "PCs contain more valuable personal information than ever as people increasingly shop online, use social networking sites and take digital photos," said Sarah Kidner, editor of Which? Computing. "Such information could bring identity thieves a hefty payday."
One Which? reader, Alexander Skipwith, had to pay £100 to get his hard drive back from a man purporting to be in Latvia: he emailed Skipwith with a personal photo to show that he had access to his hard drive, which contained bank statements and a mortgage application. Skipwith had previously been told that his faulty hard drive would be wiped of personal information when it was replaced by a computer manufacturer.
Re: Before you sell your computer, smash the hard drive
Wipe the hard drive, refill hard drive right up with huge files (Linux distro ISOs are good), wipe again. Stops the undelete utilities, as all they get back are the ISO files. Probably needs a bit more to guarantee immunity from forensic level scanning, but its good enough to stop the ebayers. Forensic scanning needs the platters removing and remounting on a specialist reader which can fathom the residual magnetism left from the original data. Redefining the partitions especially with a different format type and then repeating the filling and emptying a couple of times with different files reduces the chances that even forensic can get it back.
Just deleting and/or reformatting is next to useless.
Re: Before you sell your computer, smash the hard drive
“Hammers” smashing “Hard drives”? Preposterous! Do your research Which? !
This is silly. It’s misleading to the public, and honestly smacks of a heady mix of sensationalism and a disturbing lack of research on the part of the Which? team.
Which? Computing Magazine recommends smashing hard drives with a hammer to protect personal data.
The problem is that most people rely on simply “deleting” the data, trusting that the computer actually does what it says when you click the appropriate button. In fact, data that has just been “deleted” from a hard drive without the use of a good data erase program is not erased at all, the only thing that is actually changed on the hard drive are the pointers that tell the PC where the data is stored- essentially they go from “this is where the data is” to “this space for rent.”
Is destroying your hard drive the only 100% method to keep your data safe? Well, technically, yes. HOWEVER, any decent secure data erase program which overwrites the data surface of your hard drive will make the data on the drive almost completely impossible to recover. I say “almost” because if an obsessive with access to a supercomputer and an electron microscope had several years to work on reverse engineering pseudo-random number generation algorithms, he could potentially(if everything went perfectly) figure out some of what might have been on the hard drive before the data erase was run. In practical terms, that’s never going to happen.
Erase your data...change a life!
Finding a good data erase program that will securely overwrite and thoroughly destroy any data from your computer’s hard drive isn’t that difficult. Good secure erase programs are quite easy to find on the Internet and many of them are even free to use.
If you plan to erase the data on your PC before disposing of it, you may want to read on:
Computers 4 Africa is a charity located in Kent. The charity’s main goal is to provide computers for schools in Africa. The way they do this is by holding local appeals throughout the United Kingdom. Through these local appeals and other efforts the charity is able to collect unwanted (no more than 5 years old) IT equipment. So far, Computers 4 Africa has been able to send approximately 3,700 PCs to African schools. To learn more visit www.computers4africa.org.uk.
Re: Before you sell your computer, smash the hard drive
The standard Windows full format doesn't delete stuff. The difference between a quick and a full is that the full reads the disk and modifies the index tables so that bad sectors are blocked out, the quick just rewrites the index area.
It needs a low level format to remove everything, it isn't available in Windows as its use will often destroy a disk as manufacturers tend to put track tables in the low level format so that the drive can work. To do it non destructively needs everything to be overwritten with non important data or just plain patterns which is what the utilities do. Linux Distros work well, they don't contain any copyright material and they are freely available for download and they are big, so theres few gaps between files which doesn't get overwritten.
Re: Before you sell your computer, smash the hard drive
Quote:
Originally Posted by pluggy
The standard Windows full format doesn't delete stuff. The difference between a quick and a full is that the full reads the disk and modifies the index tables so that bad sectors are blocked out, the quick just rewrites the index area.
It needs a low level format to remove everything, it isn't available in Windows as its use will often destroy a disk as manufacturers tend to put track tables in the low level format so that the drive can work. To do it non destructively needs everything to be overwritten with non important data or just plain patterns which is what the utilities do. Linux Distros work well, they don't contain any copyright material and they are freely available for download and they are big, so theres few gaps between files which doesn't get overwritten.
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Before you sell your computer, smash the hard drive
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