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Apply topically.
Posted on 06/04/2005 7:53:11 AM PDT by new cruelty
In revising the O&O Study, 'Data Data Everywhere,' 200 used hard disks were purchased on eBay and scanned for existing data. On more than 70% of this used storage media O&O discovered some sort of personal or business data. In some cases, the data found were quite staggering. The O&O Study describes the reasons why data are not securely deleted and presents solutions for improving data security for both private and business users.
The Berlin-based O&O Software is today releasing its freshly updated study, "Data Data Everywhere 2005." This particular study tackles the issues concerning the secure deletion of personal and company data on used storage volumes that have been discarded or resold. In order to gather data for this study, 200 hard disks were bought and scanned for all deleted data still accessible on them.
Enlisting the help of such standard store-bought products as O&O UnErase or O&O DiskRecovery, data could easily be detected and then made accessible on more than 70% of the tested hard disks. Of the 3.3 million files found on these test drives, analysts at O&O were able to reconstruct more than 40,000 Word Documents, about 15,000 Excel Spreadsheets, and around 50 e-mail mailboxes containing their entire message stashes still intact from previous users.
The results in 2005 are alarming. Even if the rate of recovered data has slightly fallen in comparison to the results of the 2004 study, the integrity of the found and recovered data is still very high.
Because a growing number of common daily tasks today are done with the aid of a computer or the Internet, used hard disks can open a window into the private or professional lives of their previous owners. From important marriage documents and appointments made by e-mail, to scanned credit cards and work or school performance evaluations, documents of every kind have been found.
But private users are not the only ones that exercise a lack of precaution with their data. The same has been found to be the case with companies and institutions. As this study shows, even large and well-staffed companies have been known to release sensitive data by way of discarded hard disks. In one particular case, a number of files concerning credit ratings at a large bank were found. It is doubtful that the tagline "Highly Confidential" would succeed at stopping any would-be readers from having a look.
In fact, the study proves that companies and institutions need improvement when it comes to deleted data security. On the majority of hard disks tested in this year's test group, O&O was able to gain easy access to sensitive data of all kinds, confirming again the results of last year's study.
In addition, the study covers the potential causes leading to inadequate data protection. Next to careless user behavior on the computer, the main cause cited in the study is the simple lack of user knowledge. This lack of knowledge is only exacerbated by commonly believed myths, not the least of which is the myth that the formatting of a hard disk means the secure deletion of all of its data.
To prevent the danger of such misuse, the study presents users with tips for improving the protection of their data on their hard disks. Simple and easily implemented software solutions, such as O&O SafeErase, are suggested here as the best methods for achieve such improvements.
If your that paranoid that you think someone is going to recover you data use some kind of wipe program so the drive overwrites ever magnetic bit on the platter several times or degauss the platter surface or destroy/remove the iron oxide from the platter surface
Note... just destroying the disk directory or damaging part of the platter is not going to remove the magnetic data from the un damage parts..the platter does not need to spin to read the magnetic bit...just a magnetic pickup head moving over a magnetic surface... just like your atm card swipe... a magnetic surface (the brown iron oxide magnetic stripe) moving over a magnetic pickup head to read the flux changes...get raw bits and you can recreate alot of the data.... think of a mag tape... chop it up and you can still get a fragments of info from each little tape segment
BURN IT!
Jeez, what a day. I've done 3 posts already today advocating setting things on fire! LOL
Guess it's time to go pick up some charcoal, steaks, burgers, and chicken and do some grillin'.
;-D
LOL. Put that fire-bug in you to good use.
Seriously? Will the bleach solution work? I need to ruin one by Monday.
Ironically, I just replaced a hard drive on my desktop today. I keep my old hard drives - comes in handy as additional storage if you get the right equipment for it to act as an external drive.
Regards, Ivan
How do you recover deleted files?
I haven't seen the term degaussing since I was an electrician's mate in the Navy. We had real big degaussing coils on the ship but their purpose was to make the ship invisible to magnetic mines as the ship passed through the earth's magnetic field.
"I haven't seen the term degaussing since I was an electrician's mate in the Navy."
That's odd. Your monitor probably has a degaussing button on it, or on it's menu.
It's not on the monitor and I haven't been looking for it on the menu. Therefore, I would say I haven't seen it.
+ Apply topically.
Just a matter of scale.
I would have rather have burned mine but live in a city and couldn't do it; so instead I took a good steel head hammer to mine and beat the sh*t out of it.
How do you recover deleted files? Anyone? I deleted some info. last year, recovered it but it was encrypted. I tried everything, can't decrypt. Any ideas?
I’ll take your word for it.
I recall one time when our COO had a drive crash – a literal “head crash.”
The recovery company required something like $2,500 deposit because they’d be buying at least two drives of the exact model and chipset.
In addition they’d be taking them apart in a clean room, removing the read/write heads, exchanging platters, and trying to recover whatever they could.
They (from my recollection) guaranteed NOTHING. They allowed you an account up to $10,000. Anything over that you had to approve. I recall that they were able to recover his address book and other company-contact info – which is what he wanted/desired. Win/win, I guess.
Don't really know how much the recovery cost - I'm guessing $7,000-ish.
There's some pretty unscrupulous recovery companies out there.
only if the Koran is on the drive.
It would’ve been in late ’99 or early ’00. It was some guy out of San Jose that had been recommended as one of the best. I remember his “business card” (more like a paperweight) was a disc platter that had his name and company info etched into it somehow.
It was expensive – I remember that.
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