Canadians Should Recycle Their Computers, Not Their Data--CBL Data Recovery Urges Corporations and Individuals to Safely Dispose of Computer Hardware without Leaving Private Data on Hard Drives.
With Earth Day approaching, many Canadians are thinking about recycling. And with new technology constantly being introduced to the market, thoughts turn to recycling computers. However, both corporations and individuals alike are not always taking the necessary precautions to completely eliminate information from hard drives when they dispose of their computers.
Before computers are donated to charities, resold or placed on the curb for garbage pick up, the hard drives of computers should be wiped of sensitive, private information. Data contained on non-functioning computers could fall into the wrong hands much to the embarrassment of the previous user.
The revelation last week that a laptop computer which contained personal information regarding Canadian Alliance party members in the riding of Calgary-Nose Hill was purchased on eBay is yet another important reminder that sometimes data needs to be destroyed, especially when computers change hands.
"Even though data can be lost due to physical damage or human error, it's not irretrievable," says Bill Margeson, president and CEO of CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. "That's why it's especially important that computers changing hands, either for reuse or disposal, are properly cleansed of all personal information."
Many people think that repeatedly deleting data, repartitioning or reformatting the hard drive are sufficient means to render data inaccessible. In reality, until data is actually overwritten by new information or a signal, it can be recovered by programs that read disk sectors directly. The only infallible ways to destroy data or make it completely inaccessible are to degauss, wipe the drive, overwrite files or to simply destroy the storage media itself. - Source: http://www.ccnmatthews.com
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