OLD COMPUTER DISK DRIVES – A GOLD MINE FOR IDENTITY THIEVES

As part of our identity theft prevention program we advise clients to destroy old hard disk drives from personal computers when scrapping them or donating the units to schools or charity,

While this caution is well understood, consumers continue to make the error of leaving a hard drive in a PC when disposing of it.

When PC’s are recycled the hard drives are pulled from the units and often auctioned off. In a recent study 300 used hard disks were purchased on auction site throughout the world. 41% were unreadable, 20% contained information identifying their previous owners, 5% held commercial business information such as account numbers and customer information, and an additional 5% held “illicit” data.

Data commonly found on these old hard drives included payroll information, mobile telephone numbers, copies of invoices, employee addresses and pictures, IP addresses, network information, illicit audio and video files, and financial details including credit card accounts.

How do you dispose of old hard drives? You have two options – degauss the drive or physically destroy the drive. Degaussing the drive involves a placing the drive in a powerful magnetic field to erase information. Some PC stores may have degaussing units available for consumer use, however these systems are not easy to find. The other option is to physically destroy the drive. Two physical destruction techniques are common – sledge hammer or a bucket of salt water. While the sledgehammer technique has some merit, we advise the salt water technique. Take a bucket of water, add a cup of salt, drill a hole in the disk drive housing to let the water in, place the drive in the bucket, put the bucket in the garage, wait a week, toss out the drive into the trash or recycling. Salt water attacks the circuitry of the unit as well as the aluminum substrate of the disks themselves. After a week the drive is ruined and recovery of data impossible.