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Online Revenge

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wipe-the-hard-drive dept.

Many people have submitted this story of a broken laptop purchased on e-bay. The buyer gives a little lesson on why you should always clean your hard drive before you sell a computer.

3 of 645 comments (clear)

  1. Boot and Nuke by mahesh_gharat · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you are selling/sending for repair, either your laptop or storage media, do not forget to take the backup and wipe out the entire content. Simply formatting/deleting the content may not help. The data will be still there, only the index (Allocation table) will be changed.
    You can use something like Darik's Boot and Nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/ for deleting the content permanently.

  2. Re:Sector encryption by davidesh · · Score: 5, Informative

    try Darik's Boot and Nuke... http://dban.sourceforge.net/

  3. Unverifiable? Let's give it a go... by mattmacf · · Score: 5, Informative
    After an intensive bit of sleuthing (ok, I found thesetwo screenshots off the original blog) we can dig up just a bit more info than the Register story provided.

    For your viewing pleasure:

    The original ebay auction (someone might wanna grab a mirror in case ebay decides to pull that down). Up for auction is a refurbished HP laptop with a 2.8 GHz P4 with two gigs of ram, a 15" screen and a DVD+/-RW. Ironically enough, the HD capacity is not listed.

    The seller, amir6626, who is no longer a registered ebay member with a feedback score of -2 (0 at the time of the auction with only one or two total feedback tops).

    The buyer, spikytom, an ebay member since '02 with a score of 79 (70 at the time of the auction) with a total of 1 negative feedback.

    The bid history. Of note here is the fact that the auction was sniped 20 seconds before ending for GBP$350 (roughly US$660), quite a deal on the laptop that was listed.

    Personally, I think it's quite a leap to claim extortion. I'll let you guys make your own judgements, but if you ask me, it seems like nothing more than a legitimate ebayer pissed after getting tooled over by a run-of-the-mill ebay scammer. And hey, who wouldn't be? Call me crazy, but I think the blog is great. Not only does spikytom get his own creative revenge, we all get a laugh out of it.
    --
    I only mod funny =D