Wipe Your Harddrive
At least, before you resell it.
It’s always amazed me how many people don’t think about this. Honestly, do you want people you only know through eBay to have your old financial records? Or erotic e-mail you wrote your ex-husband? Or old pictures of you before you started your diet? Or any of a thousand other dangerous or embarassing things that you might leave behind on a drive. After all, all it takes is formatting the drive twice and it should be pretty safe. If you want to get close to government standards, format it nine times. That should pretty well make it impossible to read the old data. For most folks, this really shouldn’t be a big problem, since most folks don’t resell their hard drives, but, apparently, it’s become enough of an issue that the BBC News wrote an article about it.
If you’ve ever bought, or sold, a hard drive on eBay, or anywhere else, read this article. It should frighten you half to death. And, the problem doesn’t stop with hard drives. Any kind of data storage is at risk. Even those memory sticks in that digital camera you sold. Like the idea of your family pictures just floating around out there? Yeah, me neither. So, do yourself a favor and wipe your old data storage devices before you get rid of them. No matter how you dispose of them.
Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Hating people is like burning down your house to get rid of a rat."
--Harry Emerson Fosdick
