confidential info on old harddrives.

Rumor has it that Tony Duell may have mentioned these words: Eeeek!! No, Please! :-( Seems to me as well. Right. Now, I'm all for education, but don't blow the problem out of hand! The media sure loves that (can you say "O.J. Simpson","Y2K",etc.?) and look what happens after the media grabs hold - they never let go. If you got the machine from a lawyer/doctor/etc. you don't know, just wipe the data and be on with your life... but if said "professional" is a fairly good friend, you might be able to go to that person and say: "You know, that machine you gave me still had some confidential info on it. I didn't look at it, wiped it clean, and covered your ass. If any more machines come my way that have personal data on them, rest assured that I won't look at the info, and will delete it immediately. I really appreciate the machine, and I'm really glad you didn't destroy it, and if any of your (insert profession here) friends have older machines they're upgrading from, **you might wish to remind them gently to be sure to wipe the data first.**" [[ Editor's Note: Instead of what's contained in the **'s, you could instead insert "you might wish to let them know that I offer a very *affordable* confidential information wiping service, the charge for the service is that I get to keep the machine after the confidential info is destroyed." :-) ]] Obviously, this is a rough draft, and you might have to adjust for Politically Correctness and whatnot, but if you make it sound like you're doing them a big favor, they're more likely to trust you with new giveaways in the future, right? Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, but if you think I'm right, then your worldview must be as skewed as mine! ;^> Just my $0.00000000000000002, and that's all it's worth! "Merch" -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig. If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.