Study Finds 1 in 10 Used Hard Drives Contains Old Personal Data

Lucas123 writes "A newly published study by Britain's data protection regulatory agency found that more than one in 10 second-hand hard drives being sold online contain recoverable personal information from the original owner. "Many people will presume that pressing the delete button on a computer file means that it is gone forever. However this information can easily be recovered," Britain's Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said in a statement. In all, the research found 34,000 files containing personal or corporate information were recovered from the devices. Along with the study, a survey revealed that 65% of people hand down their old PC, laptop and cell phones to others. One in ten of those people who disposed of their old devices, left all their data on them. The British government also offered new guidelines for ensuring devices are properly wiped of data."

Whoopdie-doo

[timeOday]

Who is going to bother with a time-consuming forensic-analysis style attack with a 10% chance of success when you can break into some company and get thousands of credit card numbers and/or SSNs? Sheesh, if you want credit card numbers, just get a job at any restaurant as a waiter.

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Only 1 in 10?

[hahn]

I would venture to guess that most people don't realize that deleting a file doesn't completely wipe it. The bigger question is, how many people who buy or receive those second hand-drives are looking to recover the data, and what % of them would do something with it that would NOT be okay with the original owner. I'd like to think not that many. But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if there were scammers who look to buy cheap used drives to see if they can dig up some useful info on it. Seems to me that would be higher yield than trying to phish for it with spam, and easier than trying hack websites.

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