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Second Hand Hard Discs Reveal Secrets

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hasn't-anyone-heard-of-dd dept.

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News has a story about MIT grads buying old hard discs from eBay and elsewhere, and finding credit card numbers, ATM transactions, porn and emails all accessible on them. Comments? What's the strangest thing readers have found, or left, on a hard drive?"

2 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Another Duplicate.... by Cubeman · · Score: 5, Informative

    This was posted before here.

  2. Data from previous owners by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Okay, we've established this article is a dupe. But the original didn't have this juicy morsel:
    "What's the strangest thing readers have found, or left, on a hard drive?"
    Like many /. readers, I am considered the local "computer guy" that fixes the computers when things go wrong. One system I recently worked on was a throw-away by a local hospital. I was stunned and shocked when I went scouring the hundreds of .dbx and .dbf files, only to find that it still had on it medical records!

    Knowing this could cause legal trouble, I quickly got on the phone and called the hospital. They said that they thought the system was clean, and that I should destroy any data on the drive. I then called my lawyer. After a small consulting fee (about $60) he informed me that I shouldn't have anything to worry about, so long as I did as the hospital asked, and destroyed all copies of the records. And I did, and that was the first time I ever felt good about losing data!

    (Posting anonymously, in case any other slashdotters get any funny ideas... :)