So much of our lives is captured on the electronic devices we use. It is not surprising that more and more information is processed on smartphones as opposed to actual computers. No matter what your device of choice, you should remove any personal information prior to disposal. Unfortunately, too many people don’t know how to properly remove their information or perhaps they don’t care.

Dark Reading reported that Josh Frantz, a security researcher at Rapid7, set out to see what data he could recover from disposed devices. Frantz tested desktops, laptops, removable media, hard drives, and cell phones from 31 businesses around his home in Wisconsin. He spent about $600 on the equipment. Apparently, the refurbish and donation service companies don’t actually wipe your personal data despite claiming that they do. The report from Rapid7 found data such as:

  • 41 Social Security numbers
  • 19 credit card numbers
  • Two passport numbers
  • 147,000 emails
  • 214,000 images/photos

At the end of the day, the analysis found that only 3% of the recycled devices actually had the information wiped. It’s a pretty sad statistic. Wipe the data yourself instead of trusting a service to do it for you.

Email: jsimek@senseient.com  Phone: 703.359.0700

Digital Forensics/Information Security/Information Technology

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