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If you saw Real Story on BBC1 on 14th August 2006, chances are that you may be a little concerned about the data on your hard drive. Simply taking your PC down to the tip once you've finished with it doesn't always guarantee that the data on your hard disk will be removed!
Did you see Real Story on BBC1 on 14th August? I did and they weren't exaggerating! Here's an excerpt from their website (click here to read the full article!) | Quote: | | Bank account details of potentially thousands of Britons are being sold in West Africa for less than £20 each, the BBC's Real Story has learned. The information is contained on the hard drives of personal computers exported to Nigeria, along with thousands of pages of other confidential material. Hard drives - the devices that computers use to store all sorts of data - are very easy to get hold of and there is a genuine market for people upgrading their computers with our cast-offs. Some 23,000 tonnes of electronic waste, the equivalent of about 750,000 computers, is flooding out of the UK and into the developing world every year, according to the Environment Agency. They end up in computer markets in cities such as Lagos, Nigeria, where you will find second hand parts of PCs from Britain and all over the world. The problem comes when someone with a criminal mind accesses the information that is stored on this hard drive. "Once you let your computer go away, your so-called personal computer is no longer personal, it becomes very public," said environmental campaigner Jim Puckett. A single hard drive can have thousands upon thousands of pages of extremely personal information. |
Simply reformatting the hard disk doesn't get rid of the information contained on the hard drive - there are programs out there that are easy to get hold of that allow anyone with a reformatted drive to get information back off it. This could be letters you wrote - web pages you may have visiting (including secure sites such as your bank, BT phone bill, or even your eBay account!). In order to get rid of the data securely, you MUST overwrite the entire contents of the drive with dummy data.
As was mentioned in the program - reformatting your hard disk before you dispose of the PC is just like you binning the card index for a filing cabinets - you've still got all the documents that the filing cabinet contains! The best option for removing data from your machine is a proper Data Removal Tool. I use something called StompSoft Drive Washer to clean my clients' machines, and this works well, although you do need a floppy disk drive in the machine you want to trash in order for it work. It's £14.98 from Amazon.
There's also a free one - "KillDisk". More information on this program is available from here: http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
I also offer secure data removal to my clients in the Driffield area - contact me for more information on this service.
If you want to know more about this service, or other services that Driffield Computing, email
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and we'll be in touch.
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Secure Data Removal 
