A player finds a PC on the street, takes it with him, and discovers that the owner has left him a “gift”: private pictures and data that he would rather not have seen.
A user posted on Reddit. Here he explains that he found an old computer on the side of the road. His post is likely less about the performance of the found PC and more about what he found on the computer: the data of the previous owner. And that is a big problem.
On Reddit, the user complains accordingly:
Please at least delete the hard drive before you throw your old computer on the street …
I really don’t want to see your honeymoon videos, your porn collection, and your company’s trade information.
As evidence, he shows a picture of a snippet from a photo that he found on the computer.
And other users add that this is a big problem: Even people with 20 years of experience dispose of their PCs without considering the old data on the devices. And that is a real problem.
Private, undeleted data can pose a significant security risk
What exactly is the problem? Personal data on hard drives and other storage media can easily fall into the wrong hands without secure deletion, which poses a significant risk to privacy and identity.
Old PCs often contain sensitive data such as emails, photos, videos, documents, stored passwords, and account information. If these are not removed, they can be recovered by subsequent owners or criminals.
Deleting also protects the privacy of friends, family, or contacts, whose data is often also stored on the device.
What is recommended? For HDDs, multiple overwrites with random data or special programs that perform the deletion are advisable. Some even recommend physically destroying hard drives. For SSDs, a so-called “Secure Erase” is the recommended way to irretrievably delete data.
An alternative for hard drives and SSDs for some people is still floppy disks: In the American city of San Francisco, public transportation has been using floppy disks for over 20 years. Back then, it was one of the most modern systems in the world. But an upgrade is sorely needed, and it is also very costly: A large city has been relying on floppy disks daily for 26 years, but with each passing year, the fear of a catastrophic failure grows.
