Posted on 05/23/2010 4:26:55 PM PDT by MamaDearest
(CBS) A CBS News investigation last month found that nearly every digital copier built after 2002 stores an image of documents copied, scanned or emailed by the machine on hard drives.
CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports parents and students at Dos Palos High School in Sacramento found out the hard way recently, when CBS affiliate KOVR pulled hundreds of student names, home addresses, cell phone and social security numbers off the hard drive of an old school copier.
"The fact that information that we treat very, very carefully somehow got out of our system and is out there is a huge concern to us," said Brian Walker, Dos Palos school district superintendent.
Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey is of the same mind. Citing our report, he called for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission -- concerned most Americans don't know their information can be compromised.
"We have to do a lot more to insure that the public and corporations know this," Rep. Markey said, "and that absolute security is applied to copy machines across our country."
Our investigation last month revealed how easy it is to buy used copiers at a warehouse and remove the hard drive packed with personal data.
Using software available free on the Internet, our expert, John Juntunen of Digitial Copier Security, downloaded thousands of documents in less than 12 hours.
From the Buffalo Police Department we found lists of domestic violence complaints, and targets in a major drug raid.
From a New York construction company, we found 95 pages of pay stubs with names, addresses and social security numbers.
And from a health care company, we found hundreds of pages of personal medical records. As a result of our story, Affinity Health was required to notify more than 400,000 people of a potential breach of their privacy.
"I think the copy machine industry has to step up, provide the leadership and technology that insures this information is scrubbed from copy machines," Rep. Markey said.
Now the Federal Trade Commission has jumped onboard, looking for ways to better protect the public from a simple office copier that we now know can leave behind a digital trail of secrets.
Why?
One fundamental confusion in See BS’s story is that they bought and examined multi-function office machines, i.e. dual copier/fax machines. The fax function saves copies of faxes, just as does the software that comes with many home office fax machines that are attached to PCs. Failing to purge those copies before relinquishing a fax machine is as stupid and culpable of the user failing to purge a PC before relinquishing it. “Pure” copiers normally don’t store anything in recoverable format.
There are hard drives inside copiers? I thought the bits for each copy were stored in RAM.
I’m wrong?
stupid and culpable of => stupid and culpable AS
social security documents, birth certificates, butts...
“It was only a paper moon...”
Years ago I bought a roll of ink/film for my cheapo fax maching from Office Depot... it was supposed to be new, but it had been used. I unrolled the film and there were impressions of legal documents on it... it apparantly had been used by some law firm before me and somehow got repackaged and sold as new.
Most modern day copies have their own operating systems (Windows) and GUI interfaces that must be stored on a hard drive. Also, since a lot of them do “copy to pdf” conversion with email capability they are hooked up to company’s network servers.
I never thought of it, but it is kinda scary. Every time ours broke the tech could have came and replaced the hard drive and we would not have thought anything about it. Of course all of our customers personal information was copied to pdf for digital storage on our network drive.
Security agencies fought to have such data retained as long as possible. And to have the companies that make these devices keep the facts out of the public’s notice.
They also got printer manufacturers to add identifiable marks to what they print so the printer that made it can be identified just from the printed document.
They also got printer and copier manufacturers to install software that makes copying currency difficult.
They also have got manufacturers of various devices to store records of some file names, data, ?? into flash memory inside various chips within the devices. It takes a coded sequence of data for the chips to then spit out the data...in case ‘someone’ needs it some day.
Many of these machines are very high tech combo printer and copiers that are just plugged into the network. They are essentially a computer and use hard drives to spool the printing and copy jobs.
The ones in my old office could scan and email, copy and print. You could start scanning your copy jobs and the machine would print the copies once any print jobs were finished.
It had never occurred to me that the machine would just store everything. This is a huge liability for companies with data privacy requirements.
We recently threw out a pair of old computers: since we’ve five between the two of us, there wasn’t much point in they’re taking up room.
All of the data on the hard drives had been duplicated on the currents, so I (not so) carefully removed them.
Then they got around four rounds (each) of 5.56 from around three yards, and were discarded in a separate trash flow.
I’m not real worried that that data will be “reclaimed”.
now that’s redneck trouble “shooting”
freaky-deaky
Many companies rent the Kyoceras for all their facilities so every few years they get replaced with the next models.
I thought the same thing. You should watch the video story. Quite shocking. There is a regular hard drive in there and it saves everything!
In the story, an insurance company copier the reporter looked at had everyone's medical records, showing some serious conditions.
Very serious problem.
I have been a copier tech for more than 25 years. The thing is that nearly all “copiers” these days are multi functonal. Every copier that can scan once and print many has a hard drive, and yes image data can be recovered with the right software. There are also image servers and RIP’S (raster image processors) these all have HDD’s.
This article is annoying to me as I have worked with many accounts who insist the HD be formatted by their IT dept. before the machine leaves their office at the end of the lease, now there are bound to be more. Also encryption kits and HDD data erase kits are a pain to install and de-install. :(
I knew that my MFC stored faxes, because if you had ten pages to fax, it would store all ten into memory before dialing. And, if it dialed and there was no response, it would wait a while, I think about 15 minutes, and then try again.
What I didn’t know, and I don’t think the instructions say, is how to purge the old records from memory when you no longer need them.
People still use fax machines?
The story did not spell it out, but medical insurance companies don’t get nearly as much actual paperwork as they do faxes. It sounds like a fax machine that kept copies of incoming faxes (from doctors’ offices sending in claims). The insurance offices probably didn’t even try to purge the copies before returning the fax machines.
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