Whenever a person has to dispose of his financial statements or other sensitive personal information, he makes sure he shreds it before throwing it away. However, when it comes to disposing of his storage devices such as used hard drives or CDs, he does not seem to show the same care in erasing the details contained on them before throwing them away. It is surprising to see almost the same level of negligence exercised by companies when disposing of used computers containing details about their customers.
According to the Data Protection Act, any company that holds information of a customer should take the responsibility of protecting the information. However, researches indicate that more than 50% of companies do not completely delete the data before disposing of them which could be misused subsequently. Researchers were able to retrieve financial and personal information of the customers from these hard drives.
Dangers of Security Breach
Every computer tends to have some form of sensitive data. A personal desktop might contain information such as a person's credit card details, PIN number, bank statements, etc. A company might hold customer's name, address, social security number, financial statements, etc on the computer. Similarly, a University or School would maintain a database about the students' personal details.
We tend to buy a new computer every few years to stay on par with the latest technology. So, we decide to give away the old computer to charity, sell it off or just throw it away with the rest of your garbage. No matter what option you choose, it could turn out to be dangerous unless you have destroyed the data on it. In a study conducted by researchers to check on the seriousness of the issue, they went ahead to purchase a few samples of used hard drives. They were shocked to find that people had their PIN numbers and credit card details stored on them and had not bothered to delete them while selling it off. The same story was repeated in Universities where the drives contained all student information.
From the sensitiveness of these information details, you would have been able to gauge the amount of damage it could cause. To further reiterate the importance of proper disposal of your storage media, let us discuss some of the dangerous consequences that it could have on you and your family.
Identity Theft: Once a person is able to access your personal information, he can use your identity to involve in fraudulent activities such as accessing your bank account, using your credit card to make purchases, etc.
Kidnapping: With access to all your personal information, the criminals might have sufficient details about everyone in your family including your children and your financial position. This has led to serious crimes such as kidnapping the children for money etc.
Blackmail and Extortion: Studies indicate that people have information of personal details such as their extramarital affairs, etc. stored on their computers. When their hard drive comes in possession in wrong hands, they might be blackmailed for money. They might even be coerced into paying money to the criminals who have sensitive information about them.
Ways of Disposing the Storage Disks
If you thought that by deleting the information or performing an OS reinstallation you have got rid of the data on your storage media, you are mistaken. Even if you think your hard drive has crashed and would not boot to the Operating System, it is still possible to recover the data present on it. There are numerous data recovery services and software available in the market that can help rebuild the information from your hard drive or other removable storage media such as CD, DVD, flash drive, etc.
So the best way of getting rid of the information would be to purchase or download software that are specially available to erase the information on the drive making it safe for you to dispose of them. You could also perform a low-level formatting that can destroy the information. This is different from the normal formatting that you usually perform. Alternatively, you can physically break your hard drive or any other storage media so that no one would be able to recover the data from it.
Do not hesitate to take a little time out of your schedule and spend a few bucks on computer data shredding. Is it not worth paying this little price for the security and peace of mind which could otherwise be jeopardised by data misuse?
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