Data Mining Used Hard Drives 695
linuxwrangler writes "One hopes the /. crowd knows the perils of discarding storage with sensitive data but this article drives home the point. Two MIT grad students bought used drives from eBay and secondhand computer stores. Among the data found on the 158 drives were 5,000 credit-card numbers, porn, love-letters and medical information."
Guess those pop up ads were right (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily for me, my Ebay'd hard drives are safe (Score:5, Funny)
MIT Grad students (Score:5, Funny)
Don't I feel inferior. I've done the same with used HD's in the past and I only have a HS edumacation.
HD Abuse (Score:3, Funny)
Take them outside, and throw them as high into the air as possible. Then watch them land on concrete.
I think that render the drive useless. =)
Gary Glitter (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How many credit cards per hard disk??? (Score:5, Funny)
Your old HD is safe. (Score:5, Funny)
Old news or not... (Score:5, Funny)
I tried to explain the concept to her, but for an IT manager, she was woefully bad at technology.
Actually, come to think of it, she was about average...
start an extortion & blackmail company.. (Score:5, Funny)
icanstilltellyourwifebill.com [icanstillt...febill.com]
he brought a hard drive, found all this cool stuff on it.. & put it to DVD for the masses
Re:Guess those pop up ads were right (Score:5, Funny)
You don't need any external software! (Score:2, Funny)
It's like magic!
we destroyed our harddrives right (Score:3, Funny)
btw, has anyone seen my old ti calculator? it was on the 21st floor of two.
Above average. (Score:3, Funny)
Your wayback machine is broken (Score:5, Funny)
50 MB? Try 5 MB.
SCSI? Not in production.
Sun? Sure...
Linux? Try CP/M.
hexedit? Try debug.
Asian Students? First wave Vietnamese refugees, maybe.
E-mails? If you were working on ARPA.
Porn? Maybe PG rated adventure games...
Tax dollars at work? In 1979, we had to walk
10 miles up hill (both ways) to pay our taxes, and they only accepted krugerrands and virgins without
herpes, both of which were in even shorter supply
and higher demand than they are now.
Re:MIT Grad students (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CIA (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Luckily for me, my Ebay'd hard drives are safe (Score:3, Funny)
I do attempt to smear blood on the drives, though.
And I may have once ejaculated on a platter, but I was young and I needed the money.
This is why I always mark my used drives... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Luckily for me, my Ebay'd hard drives are safe (Score:5, Funny)
That's why it's the DoD way for me: scramble the data with many passes accross the media with a stong magnet, followed by hammer strikes until it's in small pieces.
You may find this lowers its value slightly in the "Computers & Office Products" category, while raising it dramatically in the "Art - Sculpture, Carvings" category (as glue as needed).
-RB
I just shoot mine. (Score:5, Funny)
They're great target practice when set up at 50 yards. Plus, they're rendered more or less ultra-highly unreadable, with half the platters coated in vaporized lead spall, and then with the platters dramatically warped, penetrated, stretched and shattered. Many areas are complete and totally lost, the ones that arent, would require precise magnetic microscopy to observe the actual state.
These pictures [squeep.com] were of a seagate 40mb eide, splashed with a 158grn jacketed hollowpoint in
Re:I just shoot mine. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:we destroyed our harddrives right (Score:4, Funny)
Re:DPA (Score:3, Funny)
Data on Drives (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How many credit cards per hard disk??? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:$1000s to recover?!? (Score:2, Funny)
FYI: HOWTO: Secure HD for Donation or Disposal. (Score:5, Funny)
Re-format HD using the NTFS file system if the drive is larger than 2 GB, otherwise install NT Server from the earliest available service pack.
Install Windows NT 4 Server, apply service patch 6. Make sure you use a meaningless administrator password.
Upgrade MS Internet Information Server to version 4.0 from NT Option Pack. Create a default web site using the following as the index page (*.htm, *.html, *.shtml):
Why are Chinese, Dutch, German, and Russian Hackers So Homosexual?"
Chinese, hackers, IIS rules, Counterstrike, Dutch, mothers, US ALL THE WAY, Germany sucks, script kiddie, porn, pr0n, disable X10 ads, warez, firewall, Bill Clinton, rar, zip, romz, roms, direct downloads, Long Live Pakistan, How do I secure III?, index of, Ronald Reagan Library
Boot the HD in a computer with an internet connection.
Wait about four days.
Repeat the process three times.
Reformat the drive.
Donate/Discard.
Hey, at least it won't have -YOUR- important data on it.
-dameron
The proper way (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone knows you must write zeros over old drives 137 times, then bulk erase them then dip them in acid, smash them to teeny tiny bits, incorporate those bits into construction concrete for buildings on three separate continents and only then your data will be safely gone.
Though there is this one data recovery firm in Wisconsin that can get data off the drive even after all that...
Re:DPA (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, I find extensive use of sandpaper after attaching the disk to a high speed drill works wonders.
Barring that, an old fashioned bulk tape eraser also has interesting effects.
I'm thinking of other options, including battery acid, and use as a grounding rod for a Tesla Coil.
Re:HD Abuse (Score:3, Funny)
How do I destroy an HD? (Score:4, Funny)
A more humorous case of this... (Score:2, Funny)
I built a time capsule! (Score:3, Funny)
So I went down into the basement and pulled out all the old computer crap I could find -- old hard disk drives, AOL CD's, ISA boards of various types, etc. and just threw them into the cement mix until the level rose to where I wanted the wall to be.
Perhaps someday after I die (or move) someone will dismantle that wall. When they do, they'll unearth some hard disk drives, complete with a 1997 or 1998 vintage of Red Hat Linux and other software of the time.
Similar story (Score:5, Funny)
When I was 14 or 15 (long ago), I took a trip with my friend to visit his father and step mother for the day. We would have to help his father in his print shop for the day, but my friend promised in return we would be able to sneak access to his dads porn collection.
After we ended up working in his dads shop all day, we had dinner, went to his dads house, and his dad left us alone with his computers to play games on. We had brought a palette of 100 disks to hopefully sneak our porn home on, so we began copying all those pcx and gif files onto disks as fast as we could. We couldn't risk looking at them for fear of being caught. It wasn't that unusual to have a huge pile of disks because that was how things got copied in the olden days, his dad thought we were copying some of his games.
Low and behold, we fill all 100 disks with porn (an incredible stash in like 90 or 91). We go home for the evening to each of our houses, divide up the stash, and we both head straight to the computer to um, count our booty.
I get home, pop the first disk into the computer, and just about then I get a phone call -- its my friend, he says "dude, don't look at the pics, trust me." But he's piqued my interest so I have to. I load one up and what do I see? A big juicy cock. We had copied his dads gay porn stash.
You don't really want none of this... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you really SHOULDN'T sell anything on eBay (Score:3, Funny)
It could be some smart ass college kid who is going to get your old porn collection you thought was lost.
Re:Gary Glitter (Score:2, Funny)
Re:yeah right (Score:3, Funny)
If it's good enough for Doogie Howser, it's good enough for me.
Re:DOD has specific guidelines that define Overkil (Score:3, Funny)
Re:HD Abuse (Score:3, Funny)
My guess would be a glass or ceramic. The first time I opened up a hard drive I assummed the platters were metal because of their reflectivity. After trying to bend one of them and having it shatter into a million pieces in my face, I discovered that they are not.
Hard Drive Destructo Kit (Score:2, Funny)
Throwing drives in the trash reminds me of the age old story of the bank robber that goes into a bank and hands the teller one of those nifty holdup notes. You know, the one with his name and social insurance number on the other side.
-- Ok ok, I'll be good. Gimme back my karma.--
A useful idea for the Trolls! Fill a hard drive! (Score:2, Funny)