Replaced your old computer or laptop recently? Thrown out old computer: Beware!
STAY SAFE, DESTROY YOUR OLD DATA!
A recent article in the public domain described how a family's personal files were displayed on a website in Nigeria!
There are a few simple and free things you can do:
(1) Destroy your hard drive. This is the method employed by BrightCity staff when we need to "retire" an old computer for a customer.
Desktop:
Take off the outer case or side to the PC. Locate the hard drive and remove the screws securing it to the drive housing. The drive looks like this:
Destroy the drive by simply smashing the unit, above and below with a heavy hammer, outside on a hard surface. You are seeking to stop anyone seeing the drive platters - the internals of the hard drive look like this:
The hard drive is similar to a record or cd. The heads are in a vacuum and spin at high speed very close to the data. Hitting it with a hammer will be effective - and feels great!
A latop hard drive looks similar. but is 2.5" in size:
This drive is easily removed with a small screw driver - most laptops are designed with easy to remove drives. Look at your manual for more information, but there is normally a screw and a hard drive symbol on the base. Laptop drive platters tend to shatter when hit.
(2) Download and run a Shredder Program. Some of these programs are free, most of the decent shredder programs need to be purchased. They work on the basis of replacing the contents of the hard drive with a useless data - overwriting everything so that nothing can recover it. Technically you can delete files - but the computer only removes them from the hard drive's "table of contents" or index. The files are still there and can be recovered by someone with even a basic computer knowledge. The shredder program writes over those files with useless data.
(3) If you know what you are doing and want to reuse your computer or give it away, then you could remove the partition on the hard drive, re-partition and format the whole drive before reapplying your software. You will need the original Windows CD and drivers disk supplied by your manufacturer. Failing that, make sure you take notes of all your hardware, download the drivers and create a cd of the drivers BEFORE you wipe the PC.
STAY SAFE, DESTROY YOUR OLD DATA!
