Expect to see fewer hard drives.

From: Jeffrey S. Worley <Technoid_at_30below.com>
Date: Sat Feb 1 15:05:00 2003

I bought a Sun Sparcstation 4/330 a few years ago. It's hdd was intact
and after breaking the password file (I used a program called 'John the
Ripper' on it), turns out it was an ex-Nasa machine used to model
rockets. Neato find, but dumb of Nasa to let it out without blanking
the drive or even making an attempt to blank it.

Turns out it's original home was the Marshal Space Flight Center. I
really thought that was NEAT.

Regards,

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Mike Ford
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 5:43 AM
To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org; cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Expect to see fewer hard drives.

>Over two years, Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat bought 158 used hard
drives
>at secondhand computer stores and on eBay. Of the 129 drives that
>functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained
>"significant personal information" - medical correspondence, love
letters,
>pornography and 5,000 credit card numbers. One even had a year's worth
of
>transactions with account numbers from a cash machine in Illinois. "


First old PC I ever bought was from I think PCmall, they had just moved
to
a new building and gave all their people new computers, and sold the old

one from a couple pallets in the outlet store. The sign said no hard
drives
and no memory, but the guy at the counter said that "some" might still
have
them. The one I bought had a couple years of client and vendor billing
data. I have SE/30 from a county psych center complete with all the
ready
to print forms and a bunch of patient histories.

Many small scrappers promise whatever and then sell to whoever has the
top
dollar. Or worse they are honest and won't sell to me. ;( Wow do I hate
walking into ta place and seeing tasty hard drives etc. getting drilled
etc.

I don't see it as getting to be a real serious problem for us though,
since
its pretty costly to scrap old computers "by the book". Much easier to
tell
Joe in the warehouse to get rid of the old stuff, and he calls some
scrapper who slips him a few bucks and huals everything away on the
spot.
Received on Sat Feb 01 2003 - 15:05:00 GMT