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Data Mining Used Hard Drives

Posted by timothy on from the but-sircam-does-this-for-me-already dept.

linuxwrangler writes "One hopes the /. crowd knows the perils of discarding storage with sensitive data but this article drives home the point. Two MIT grad students bought used drives from eBay and secondhand computer stores. Among the data found on the 158 drives were 5,000 credit-card numbers, porn, love-letters and medical information."

3 of 684 comments (clear)

  1. I don't beleave it by Niadh · · Score: 0, Troll

    Of the 129 drives that functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained "significant personal information"

    thats 5000 cc numbers on 49 drives?
    102 credit cards numbers per drive?!

    i smell bullshit...

    maybe one of theose drives belonged to scripted kiddie with a cc# generator..

  2. Re:we destroyed our harddrives right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll
    I'm sure I'm not the only one who is a bit uncomfortable with "funny" stories about WTC. I lost a friend that day. It will never be +N, Funny. Not to me, not to his wife, not to his friends, not to his children.

    I assume you meant no harm, but it is harmful regardless. I don't see many Columbine jokes. Why are WTC jokes somehow appropriate?

  3. Re:Not so bad. by Ben's+Conscience · · Score: 0, Troll

    Annatar gloats:
    "My dad happens to be a garbage man and often brings along an occasional system he's scavanged from the dumpsters along his route. Currently I have in my possession an old IBM Aptiva with some guys bank account information on it (He did his checking and stuff with it apparently), but worst of all I have what appears to be an old Gateway tower used to store Medical information for a major hospital in the area my father works. I have over 2 gigs of peoples medical history, including what they were put in the hospital for, insurance information, release dates ect. I should really do the honost thing and reformat it but its always fun to flip the thing on and just page through stuff."

    I'm amused that you attend a Christian school, Ben. Fitting, not really surprising. Do you realize that you're sifting through real human beings extremely personal information for your own personal enjoyment? You got into college so I have to assume you're at least bright enough to theoretically know what you're doing is wrong.

    So ...Ben Krygsheld, given your hometown and your extremely unique last name, how difficult do you think it would be for me to find out who your dad is, where he works, then determine the hospitals for which his employer provides service, inform them of this factoid, and let all higgeldy-piggeldy bust loose?

    Hiring a good admin:
    $80,000/yr.

    Disposing of a hardrive correctly:
    $5

    Telling the world on Shashdot that you engage in criminal activity and implicating your father in the process...

    Priceless.

    You are going to have a very interesting week, genius. Nevermind that this page will be in Google's archive -- complete with your full name attached to it -- in a matter of days.