It may be giving someone else all your information...


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No surprise...

I've had people sell me machines that logged into their email and ebay accounts when I fired up the browser. They are lucky I'm honest.

You TOO? I take the laptop and install antiX almost immediately. I've had people at church give me an old computer that still had their bank info on it. Sheesh! What people can't remember to do. When I get rid of a computer, I keep the hard drives and smash them into little pieces with a ball-peen hammer. Dead platters. __{{emoticon}}__ __{{emoticon}}__

I have a sledge __{{emoticon}}__

I don't care what recovery software they have. They'll look for easier pickings...

This past month the church was going to return their copier to get a newer version. The pastor thought I was crazy when I said I was going to clean the hard drive on the copier. I explained that the HD had a copy of EVERY COPY that was made on it. After 2 hours of dis-assembly, I got the HD and removed all the copies the church had made without removing the info the copier company needed to verify the number of copies made. Yesterday the tech from that company called and asked how we managed to make all our copiers. That is when I told him what I had done. No damage to the machine. It still worked perfectly. It was just that they could not see what the church had copied. He offered me a part-time job with them to do exactly that; remove the data so they could put the machine back into service almost immediately.

Why do you think some people go to these government public auctions to buy old copiers? You would be surprised at what they find, like a copy of all the stuff you copied. __{{emoticon}}__

jdmeaux1952 wrote:This past month the church was going to return their copier to get a newer version. The pastor taught I was crazy when I said I was going to clean the hard drive on the copier. I explained that the HD had a copy of EVERY COPY that was made on it. After 2 hours of dis-assembly, I got the HD and removed all the copies the church had made without removing the info the copier company needed to verify the number of copies made. Yesterday the tech from that company called and asked how we managed to make all our copiers. That is when I told him what I had done. No damage to the machine. It still worked perfectly. It was just that they could not see what the church had copied. He offered me a part-time job with them to do exactly that; remove the data so they could put the machine back into service almost immediately.

Why do you think some people go to these government public auctions to buy old copiers? You would be surprised at what they find, like a copy of all the stuff you copied. __{{emoticon}}__

You never know what you could find on a copier that once was owned/leased by the government...

__{{emoticon}}__

Here's a video showing about what may and HAS happened with used copiers.



^---- embedded YouTube-hosted video: https://www.youtube.com/iC38D5am7go



Something to think about.

gasp..what about copiers used by banks or financial companies? Think of all the ID theft risk that could occur if a bank disposes of its used copiers?

DeepDayze wrote:gasp..what about copiers used by banks or financial companies? Think of all the ID theft risk that could occur if a bank disposes of its used copiers?

They do, but they wipe the hard drives clean before they leave the bank.

jdmeaux1952 wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:gasp..what about copiers used by banks or financial companies? Think of all the ID theft risk that could occur if a bank disposes of its used copiers?

They do, but they wipe the hard drives clean before they leave the bank.

I'm sure that most banks have the drives REMOVED prior to turning the machines over to the vendor.

Too much risk these days from ID theft...and can come from the unlikeliest places, such as copy machines