Just to to thrown in a little story of my own. Nothing like top-secret
international data or anything, but I once uncovered some old TRS-80 disks at
a local flea-market. So I check them out naturally. On them was some text
files of a very personal nature. Let's see... there was a draft of a letter
the man was writing for his wife... a very heated letter that talked about
splitting up and whatnot... very personal. Also, on there was some legal
documents actually going towards a divorce between the two. To make it more
interesting... the names on the documents, and apparently the previous owners
of the disks, were one of the local lawyers that we all know very well here.
Of course, they're still (happily?) married, and the documents were dated
around 1985.
Now, wouldn't you think he should have deleted that information? Do you think
I still have those documents? Well, honestly, I'm not sure if I do or not
around on floppy somewhere, but I doubt it. It had no interested to me, and I
certainly wasn't going to pass them around town!
That's enough of that boring story. But, it does prove a small if not large
point!
Catch ya' later,
CORD COSLOR
Aaron Christopher Finney wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Mar 1998, Seth J. Morabito wrote:
> > I'm curious to know how people deal with old data found on systems
> > they rescue/restore. The question was put in my mind recently by
>
> A very important question for people involved in this hobby....
>
> It kind of depends. I am a sys admin professionally right now, so I too
> have a religion based around the personal privacy of users. But as the guy
> responsible for what information people have access to, I am well aware of
> what's on any systems that are sold/given away. Certainly something
> important would have been backed up (Hubble stuff) but something sensitive
> would almost certainly been erased. My company images and stores medical
> records, about as sensitive as you can get. Short of the magnetic eraser,
> any drive that leaves my immediate line of sight gets wiped as clean as I
> can get it. Scientific/technical information that I come across I like to
> look at, and sometimes it inspires me to learn what the heck they're
> talking about. I'm not going to make copies and send it to the Chinese
> government or anything, so I don't see any harm done by it. Of course any
> personal mailboxes or notes get erased before my curiosity even knows they
> ever existed.
>
> Some people have looked at me like I was the most depraved criminal in the
> world when I mentioned reading about this or that electronic device or how
> interesting the schematic for a doo-dad was on an old system. It's a
> personal choice, and they are responsible for putting it in your hands
> anyway. Just have a little respect for personal privacy and use your own
> judgement.
>
> Aaron
--
___________________________________________________
| Cord G. Coslor : archive_at_navix.net |\
| Deanna S. Wynn : deannasue_at_navix.net | |
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| http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/4395 | |
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Received on Tue Mar 31 1998 - 01:17:45 BST