Second-hand hard drives are full of sensitive data

Independent investigations conducted by BT representatives at three universities, Clamorgan (England), Edith Cowan (Australia) and Longwood of (USA), showed that 37% of the researched drives missed. re-personal information on it.

This figure is similar to the data published in a survey conducted by many universities two years ago. This shows that most companies are not aware of the seriousness of this problem and there is still a lack of thorough data removal tools before handing them over to others.

Sensitive information is restored including salary information, financial data of many companies, credit card numbers, medical data, details of online negotiations and even pornographic documents. All are compiled from 350 hard drives purchased in online auctions.

' Recently, there have been many topics on identity theft and security, along with the appearance of appropriate tools to ensure the transfer of safe information, but it is difficult to understand why many The drive is still not cleaned up thoroughly before being thrown away , 'said BT's director of security research, Dr. Andy Jones.

' When companies remove obsolete and obsolete computers and hard drives, they have to make sure that they have done enough to destroy any data and also check out the steps. is that effective? ', he stressed.

The report states that buying second-hand drives is actually not a reliable way to own capacity. Of the 133 hard drives purchased in the UK, 44% of the drives are no longer functioning. But among those, 19% had enough information to identify the companies that spawned them, 65% had enough data to identify their names and 17% contained illegal data.

Mai Dinh