Disk drive researchers turn up IDs, child porn

A friendly reminder of the fact that your hard drive does store data long after you format it and toss it aside.

Academics wanting to make a point of how careless people are with their personal data have uncovered what they suspect could be pornographic images involving children.

They also discovered details of a US defence contract along with personal information about a defence contractor that could be used for blackmail.

About 300 second hand computer hard disks were bought by researchers wanting to find out how well people protected sensitive data when they got rid of their old hardware.

Two of the drives were suspected of containing “potential paedophile” material, said Andy Jones, head of technology research at BT’s security research centre. The drives, one found in Australia and one in Britain, were handed over to the police.

The point of the research was to find out if people were taking care to erase legitimate personal data when they got rid of their old computers; and whether it was possible to steal identities from old hard disks bought down the car boot sale.

Of the readable drives, 49 per cent contained sensitive personal information, found researchers from BT, the Universities of Glamorgan, Wales, and Edith Cowen, Australia and data wiping specialist LifecycleServices.

Jon Godfrey, of Lifecycleservices, said 95 per cent of people fail to properly erase their old hard disks before they throw them out….. Source: The Register