Fraudsters buy up old comps on Ebay

[Hawkwind]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Hard drive destruction 'crucial'

Discuss, do you wipe or destroy your old HDD's?

I still have several old HDD sitting in a box at home. Even a few 300Mb SCSI Drives. After reading this and a few other aticles I'm seriously thinking of taking a hammer to them all.

 

[Trem]

I put a nail through mine before chucking them away. Would never sell or leave them in a PC.

Even formatted its a piece of piss to recover stuff.

 

[Kryten]

It's a bollocks article that needs another side to it. You can destroy the data and make a drive re-usable fairly easily with the right know-how and software (such as what is provided and recommended by the government/HMG recognition) without danger of it being recovered - at least not without several thousand pounds of kit and expertise. Oddly enough, to please the people here that say I moan too much, I've emailed the Beeb to suggest they add another side to their story besides their annoying tendency to use scare tactics to get a point across.

Data destruction via software such as Blancco with their HMG enhanced security system will guarantee data removal and security - so much so it's used by the government at the absolute highest levels. Not much use when the same idiots in the government are leaving unencrypted drives and media in their cars, leaving on buses and what not which appears to be a larger scale issue.

 

[Bodhi]

This doesn't bother me for two reasons

1) I only throw out drives that are knackered. Deathstars, etc

2) I have no sensitive data on my PC.

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

Kroll is part of the group of companies i work for.

 

[Raven]

I have a couple kicking about, though I usually give all my old PC bits to tight arse friends who don't buy their own PC equipment who then run them into the ground. I realise even a seemingly dead HD can be repaired and the data recovered but to be honest there is very little of value to anyone on them and I very much doubt this is much of a problem as they just end up in the dustbin anyway.

Unless ofc your modern day high tec criminal has the time to scour landfill sites on the off chance he finds some hard drives...

 

[Uara]

if you want to kill your drives, open them up and drown them in petrol, it will eat them up quite nicely