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'Destroyed' Hard Drive Found At Flea Market
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Jun 01, 2006 06:01 PM
from the geek-squad-dark-sides dept.
from the geek-squad-dark-sides dept.
Billosaur writes "From Yahoo News comes this tidbit about a couple who got a very shocking phone call. Henry and Roma Gerbus received a phone call from a man named Ed claiming he had purchased their old hard drive at a flea market. They had previously taken their computer to Best Buy to have the hard drive replaced and were told that the store would destroy it. Now it has turned up at a flea market, still containing their personal information, such as bank account numbers and Social Security numbers. The Gerbus' are a little perplexed and are very worried about identity theft."
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Scandalous! (Score:5, Interesting)
Memo to store managers throughout the country: "Rotate a new batch of minimum-wage slaves into all positions, which demand technical skills and adherence to moral and ethical code, post haste!"
Gad! Whatever could motivate people who are compensated so well to scrap computers and sell parts at a flea market? I shall have to dwell further upon this great paradox this weekend at my summer cottage in the Hamptons.
Re:Scandalous! (Score:5, Informative)
Darik's Boot and Nuke [sourceforge.net]
Active Kill Disk [killdisk.com]
PC Inspector [pcinspector.de]
There should never be an excuse for selling or transfering ownership of a hard drive with pre-existing data when there are fast, free, and convienient utilities that can effectively remove all data without damaging HDD functionality. Physical destruction is of course, the most secure method of permanently wiping data, but for most folks good software based data destruction should be more than sufficient.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any of the above products except as a satisfied user.
Parent
Re:Scandalous! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true, but if your computer hardware dies in a way that the computer won't boot or power on at a
Re:In situations like that, there is no substitute (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Scandalous! (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever could motivate people who are compensated so well to scrap computers and sell parts at a flea market?
most likely someone who regularly sells at flea markets networked into a bunch of said stores and said 'if you want quick cash i'll buy junk computers fo
Re:Scandalous! (Score:5, Insightful)
Erasing the data would have been work.
Setting it up again to be able to sell it as a "working computer" would have been more work.
Just taking it and selling it as is: minimum work.
Parent
Re:Scandalous! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming Best Buy sells off this scrap. In reality they should be turning it over to a disposal company (which, in theory, could sell the parts at flea market if not the most upstanding of ethical standards are adhered to.) But as the drive should have had Holes Drilled In it smells more like the monkey in charge of that job at BB chose not to, which strongly suggests it was they who pawned the drive, not corporate masters.
Of course in a moment of doubt, always lean towards the simplest answer: the guy who did it was a really stupid mofo.
Stupid, certainly. Unethical, most definitely. He or she should be sacked and then turned over to authorities for prosecution on theft, sale of stolen property, etc.
Parent
As if though it matters... (Score:5, Funny)
Destroy it yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Destroy it yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called: "Misplaced Trust in Corporate America"
Why, just look at these words which follow, meant to calm and sooth the worried customer:
They no doubt came from some tome of boilerplate Corporate Communications and Public Relations.The real translation behind the scenes is doubtless anything less than a fast call to the law firm Best Buy retains to see how much they could be sued for and another call to the PR department to get the above phrase looked up in the Table of Contents and issued to media outlets. Meanwhile in the board room the executives are probably all bent over, like a circular conga-line holding covers over the arses of those in front of them.
Parent
Proper Planning (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the problem: A low paid employee, rather than drill holes in a drive, took it home and sold it off at a flea market. It's a small object of possibly (depending upon contents) very great value.
Where are the controls to prevent such action taking place? Consider the bank teller -- not likely a very highly paid employee, yet thousands of dollars in coin and currency pass through their hands every day. Banks have worked out procedures to ensure their employees remain honest, whether balancing their drawers, surveillance cameras, or limiting how much they may hold in at their station at any given time (i.e. if Bill Gates walks in with a suitcase full of money, the teller must turn the large deposit over to a bank officer.)
Clearly as things of great risk assume different (smaller) dimensions people in charge have not adapted their procedures. This is a failure of Best Buy at the corporate level, not just some store. They need these items to be handled with full accountability.
Parent
Re:Destroy it yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Destroy it yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Destroy it yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Destroy it yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, becuase I wouldn't have taken my computer to them in the first place. That said, the average computer user is completely ignorant about the actual innards of a computer, let alone how to wipe a drive clean (if their computer would even pass POST and allow them to boot off a floppy). Heck, they may not even be aware that there are discreet parts in the computer, one of which stores all of your data. To many people, the innards of a PC ar
Re:Destroy it yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow I doubt they'd be pleased to give Best Buy their Windows XP box with their applications and data + $$$ just to be handed back a computer with a big blank drive and no OS or a clean XP install.
Their alternative was to back everything up and destroy the hard drive themselves. But then if they could do that they'd have fitted the drive themselves anyway.
Old geek saying (Score:4, Funny)
Even if Best Buy assured me they would destroy it, I would still grab a couple utilities to write nonsense bits onto the entire drive several times.
Of course, my biggest question is who is silly enough to throw out working storage space? My inner packrat insists that precious Gigabytes should coveted.
Re:Old geek saying (Score:2)
Packrat?
Pfffft.
I've only recently thrown out (destroyed) 150 Mb MFM drives.
(though I do tend to save any 0.1" IDC jumpers on them).
Re:Old geek saying (Score:3, Funny)
So, you figure installing Windows 98 two or three times would fit the bill?
Drill Holes? (Score:2, Funny)
Why (Score:5, Funny)
If you want something done right... (Score:3, Informative)
Or get a free one that does all that (Score:3, Informative)
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Too little too late. (Score:4, Funny)
Quick! Close the barn door! The horse has bolted!
If the drive was being destroyed the store had no reason not to hand it over. He should have asked for it, or at the very least asked to be present at it's destruction.
Another selling point for my business (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another selling point for my business (Score:3, Funny)
Many ways it gets out (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Many ways it gets out (Score:3, Informative)
Most times the drives have failed so I can't even low-level format it.
The last time I had a drive too screwed up to wipe that was under warranty, fortunatly a tech came onsite for the replacement (business). He agreed that since the drive was dead it would be OK to finish destroying it while he watched. I'm sure sandpaper on the platters followed by a propane torch placed any data recovery cost beyond the value of the data.
It should be possible to arrange something like that for bad drives, much as bo
Former Employee.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think your last comment is way off base (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Former Employee.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I find this hard to believe!
You use a drill with a drill bit designed to go through metal and it's platters. Were you using safety glassess/goggles? How far was the customer in relation do you doing this work? Did you mount the drive in a vice? What did you place the drive on in case the dril
Not the couple's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
keep the drive, take the $$$ loss (Score:3, Interesting)
HDDs are around 50 cents or less per GB. Except those people who do their hardware shopping at BestBuy and arn't reading this.
If you really have to get it replaced look for someone who will let you keep the platters and just send back some of it. If they exist, have to keep the "refurbished" industry in business.
Warranty return is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
What needs to happen is the S.M.A.R.T. software on the drive needs to be a bit smarter and allow the diagnostics tools to coordinate with the manufacturers web site so that the company is sure the disk is in fact defective and they know the cause. If they determine that they don't want the disk back anyway, then let the consumer dispose of it. If they can repair the disk, then its most likely not an internal problem so if its repairable, the data should still be on it when it gets back.
Second shooter? (Score:3, Funny)
This is the fast-food of computer repair so the guy probably took out the old drive which reported several bad sectors in scandisk, dropped it in the trash and forgot about it. Later that day/week a bum that regularly dives their dumpster for crap to sell at a flea market did his normal job. Some dude out for the cheapest possible hard drive buys it then looks to see what is on it, because he's a perv and expects amature porn. Then because he rode the short bus he calls the previous owner to admit guilt.
Why is this hapless joe who accidentally mounted a hard drive then scoured it's contents closely enough to find social security numbers and the like guilty? It's like walking down a street and seeing a house with a door open. You can see the open door, and anything plainly visible from the street because of the open door. The second you walk through that door, you have trespassed.
But forget that amature porn collector.
Best Buy could solve all of this by issuing a 2lb hammer to all employees. It would help morale by providing an outlet for the rage incited by the latest management-speak directive from coorporate or the GM.
Nothing new (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, one cow-orker's HDD failed, and the aforementioned computer shop swapped it out for a new one. A little while later, we got a new employee in and ordered a new PC for him. When the "new" PC's C: drive was examined, it turned out to still have the first cow-orker's data on it!
I don't know which was worse, the fact that sensitive company data had been potentially exposed, or the fact that they sold us a used, known-bad hard drive as new?!
Geek Squad (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SSN? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SSN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:SSN? (Score:2)
Re:SSN? (Score:2)
Re:SSN? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:SSN? (Score:2)
Re:SSN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or
In my world, computers are used for far more than entertainment, toys and gimmicks. It is a way for people to manage their day to day lives, simplify complex tasks or just act as a way to get away from a paper based society. Well, they can play games just as easy too, but you get the point.
Hard drives are often a wealth of private information and it is up to the person disposing of it to ensure that it cannot be read.
And to the people getting ready to reply with "well that is the problem with computers" or "never keep personal information on a HD". It is akin to countless people (yes there are many) throwing documents like credit card bills or ANY paper information with private information in the trash. Ultimately it is up to the person to ensure he/she SHREDS the documents FIRST before trashing. This is no different than electronic media.
Parent
Re:SSN? (Score:3, Insightful)
I work for a small non-profit that refurbishes used computers for re-use, and we wipe every hard drive with an 11-pass system. (Probably overkill, DoD specifies just 7). Every volunteer who works on the computers is trained in how to do it, and in the importance of doing so. It doesn't take much person-time: Hook up the hard drive to a computer, boot from the Knoppix CD, and enter the comm
Re:Must've been a mistake (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Basic Consumer Practices???? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a gargae mechanic tells you the installed new valves, do you take the engine apart to be sure they're not lying?
Parent
Re:A question of time (Score:5, Informative)
I have had friends try erasing hard drives with a bulk tape eraser. One failed to spin up. The other two would boot up fine and still had all thier data.
Parent
Re:A question of time (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A question of time (Score:3, Informative)