I was reading an interesting article on News.com and thought I'd post it here. The article describes how two MIT students purchased 158 hard drives online and in swap meets and how much info they found on the drives.<br><br><br><br>
"On those drives, they found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, medical reports, detailed personal and corporate financial information, and several gigabytes worth of personal e-mail and pornography."<br><br><br><br>
"The students found that 129 of the 158 drives they acquired were still functional. Of these, they found 28 drives in which little or no attempt was made to erase the information. <b>On one drive, the pair found a years worth of financial transactions. The drive apparently came from an ATM in Illinois.</b>"<br><br><br><br>
I thought that was pretty amazing. I just assumed people would format their hard drives, at a minimum, before selling their system.<br><br><br><br>
Anyway, full article can be seen here if anyone's interested:<br><br><a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1083-981076.html?tag=fd_lede2_hed" target="_blank">http://news.com.com/2100-1083-981076...g=fd_lede2_hed</a>
"On those drives, they found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, medical reports, detailed personal and corporate financial information, and several gigabytes worth of personal e-mail and pornography."<br><br><br><br>
"The students found that 129 of the 158 drives they acquired were still functional. Of these, they found 28 drives in which little or no attempt was made to erase the information. <b>On one drive, the pair found a years worth of financial transactions. The drive apparently came from an ATM in Illinois.</b>"<br><br><br><br>
I thought that was pretty amazing. I just assumed people would format their hard drives, at a minimum, before selling their system.<br><br><br><br>
Anyway, full article can be seen here if anyone's interested:<br><br><a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1083-981076.html?tag=fd_lede2_hed" target="_blank">http://news.com.com/2100-1083-981076...g=fd_lede2_hed</a>