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Stupid Is as Stupid Does

May 1, 2019

People are still dumber than dirt and throw away their electronics without a thought as to what data may still reside on them. We have yet another example of data left behind when electronics are not properly disposed of. Hot for Security reported that 42% if drives sold on eBay contained sensitive data. Data recovery experts from Blanco and Ontrack analyzed 159 drives purchased on eBay. The key findings included:

• A drive from a software developer with a high level of government security clearance, with scanned images of family passports and birth certificates, CVs and financial records
• University student papers and associated email addresses
• 5GB of archived internal office email from a major travel company
• 3GB of data from a cargo/freight company, along with documents detailing shipping details, schedules and truck registrations
• University student papers and associated email addresses
• Company information from a music store, including 32,000 photos
• School data, including photos and documents with pupils’ names and grades

Unbelievable. If you are disposing of older drives with spinning platters, wipe the drives using a product such as DBAN. Solid State Drives (SSD) are a little trickier. If the manufacturer doesn’t provide a utility to wipe the SSD, try to a tool such as those provided by Parted Magic. Try a Google search for “how to wipe SSD drives” and you’ll get a lot of alternative choices.

Email:   Phone: 703.359.0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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