>> Hard Drives are being reformatted with one of those secure wiping
>> programs and then opened and smashed.
>
>Here in Houston, one place drills holes in them with a 1/2" drill. Another
>place dumps box loads of them into an industrial chipping machine. I can
>verify these...I've seen it, and it isn't a pretty sight :/
The thing I and the guy who told me about it were laughing at is how
useless their "destruction" methods really were.
They are using an off the shelf secure delete program (Norton?) and then
opening the top of the HD and hitting it with a mallet to damage the
platters.
So what does this mean... well, I am sure one of those data recovery
companies could still extract the info from the drive if someone was
willing to pay the fee (which I would assume a rival company that really
wanted the info, and was willing to bribe the trash hauler would be able
to afford).
The computers are (were? they may be done now) under guard and only
accessable after the hauler has collected the contents of the dumpster
and driven off property... I do know this first hand... I tried to make a
midnight run to collect some of the PC remains since it was supposed to
ONLY be the mobo and HD being trashed, that leaves lots of good parts for
the picking... but I was stopped at the manned gate, where I could see
the dumpster and a poor guard sitting by it reading a book... in the cold
of winter... so he wasn't there for kicks... and no, the guard at the
gate wouldn't look the other way for $100 which was all I could afford to
offer (didn't try the garbage truck driver... too afraid it is a Soprano
Special company).
-chris
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Received on Thu Apr 18 2002 - 23:45:16 BST