31 Jan
2003
31 Jan
'03
9:28 p.m.
Over two years, Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat bought
158 used hard drives
at secondhand computer stores and on eBay. Of the 129 drives that
functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained
"significant personal information" - medical correspondence, love letters,
pornography and 5,000 credit card numbers. One even had a year's worth of
transactions with account numbers from a cash machine in Illinois. "
First old PC I ever bought was from I think PCmall, they had just moved to
a new building and gave all their people new computers, and sold the old
one from a couple pallets in the outlet store. The sign said no hard drives
and no memory, but the guy at the counter said that "some" might still have
them. The one I bought had a couple years of client and vendor billing
data. I have SE/30 from a county psych center complete with all the ready
to print forms and a bunch of patient histories.
Many small scrappers promise whatever and then sell to whoever has the top
dollar. Or worse they are honest and won't sell to me. ;( Wow do I hate
walking into ta place and seeing tasty hard drives etc. getting drilled etc.
I don't see it as getting to be a real serious problem for us though, since
its pretty costly to scrap old computers "by the book". Much easier to tell
Joe in the warehouse to get rid of the old stuff, and he calls some
scrapper who slips him a few bucks and huals everything away on the spot.