When I have a client itching to give away a PC, I tell them to simply yank the hard drive and then give away the rest. Then once they have the time, they can have the drive properly wiped.

When discarding a hard disk drive, users in most cases don’t bother with properly wiping the data stored on the disk. Germany’s O&O Software in a study (download PDF)found that 113 of 200 drives it purchased on eBay still contained data, which in some cases apparead to be confidential or personal data.

By running data recovery software on the drives, O&O uncovered all sorts of information belonging to the previous owners, including documents, e-mail and pictures, some explicit and very private. One drive, so it appears, was used by a German government body. It contained information related to an ongoing external investigation, according to O&O. [Read the rest]