Waxahachie Journal

How to Avoid Data Theft When Donating a Computer System

Disposing of Computers,  Hard drives, Memory Cards, and other information storing media properly

By Charles R. Flowers

A new year has begun and perhaps you or your company have decided to forgo a system upgrade and get rid of your computer system and purchase a new one. If you've decided to donate your old computer to a charity, local group or school, it's important to make sure your computer's hard drive is completely free of data.

You need to ensure that you don't donate more than you planned. The last thing you want is to pass on with your old  PC or hard drive is sensitive business information, or even personal information such as stored passwords, personal documents and credit card numbers that could be retrieved. When you donate a computer, you really don't know where it may end up or if it will go through the hands of a malicious person with the capability to restore previously recorded and deleted data.

There are many ways to go about ensuring your data can never be retrieved. Obviously, you can choose to physically smash the drive, but there are alternatives that enable you to keep the system intact so you can donate a complete system.

ICFI is a specialist in Disk Wiping http://www.icfiforensics.com/

Terms to understand!
Format - To prepare a storage medium, usually a disk, for reading and writing.

Hard drive - A magnetic disk on which you can store computer data. The term hard is used to distinguish it from a soft, or floppy, disk.

Erasing and Formatting - Just Not Secure Enough! Simply erasing all the data on your hard drive and formatting it is not enough security. You can spend hours going through your hard drive and deleting all the files and documents you want, but using the delete key on your keyboard in Windows basically only removes the shortcuts to the files making them invisible to users. Deleted files still reside on the hard drive and a quick Google search will show many options for system recovery software will allow anyone to reinstate that data.