BEWARE:

Do not throw out your old computers, without first being absolutely sure that you have wiped its hard disk clean, with a really secure wiping program.

The BBC is right at this moment showing a TV program of how computers from council dumps are ending up in Africa, notably Nigeria, where the hard disks are often read by criminals who look for personal information, passwords, and bank accounts etc.

Some criminals then raid the bank accounts or blackmail the original owners.

Quite frankly it is simplest to simply remove the hard drive from the computer unit and KEEP the hard drive with all your other critical private documents. Or have great fun and smash the hard drive with a sledgehammer.

If the computer is still working you can get software which you make up as either a bootable floppy or a bootable CD which will do a thorough wipe. It writes all over every data sector of the disk with random numbers and repeats the process five or six or more times with different random numbers. This tend to prevent even the FBI forensic devices from getting anything back from the original data.

NOTE:

A simple Format operation merely wipes the directory, leaving the data in place. An UNFORMAT program can often rebuild the directory and make the files readable again.

Some FORMAT programs include a full disk write-check, this wipes the disk of data, but old data can still be read by forensic devices (the platters are taken out of the drive and mounted in a forensic reader).

Bill.

Revised on 15 Aug 2006

NB. Do not open a hard drive which you wish to continue to use. They are sealed to keep out all dust down to a microscopic size.

Bill.

Revised on 15 Aug 2006