'Destroyed' Hard Drive Found At Flea Market

Billosaur writes "From Yahoo News comes this tidbit about a couple who got a very shocking phone call. Henry and Roma Gerbus received a phone call from a man named Ed claiming he had purchased their old hard drive at a flea market. They had previously taken their computer to Best Buy to have the hard drive replaced and were told that the store would destroy it. Now it has turned up at a flea market, still containing their personal information, such as bank account numbers and Social Security numbers. The Gerbus' are a little perplexed and are very worried about identity theft."

Comments

As if though it matters...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone that is taking a PC to Best Buy for a HDD replacement is probably sending money to Prince Abul Smith of Nigeria anyways.

Old geek saying

[Kesch]

If you want something wiped correctly, smash it yourself.

Even if Best Buy assured me they would destroy it, I would still grab a couple utilities to write nonsense bits onto the entire drive several times.

Of course, my biggest question is who is silly enough to throw out working storage space? My inner packrat insists that precious Gigabytes should coveted.

Re:SSN?

[plams]

I had, but luckily it got mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw'd.

Why

[User 956]

Why would you pay a store to destroy something like a hard drive? Destroying it *yourself* is clearly way more fun.

Another selling point for my business

[TLouden]

Isn't it just great when your comppetition fucks themselves for you, saves so much on PR.

Re:Must've been a mistake

[Tackhead]

> Someone got serviced by the wrong Geek Squad guy

...and we've got the disgusting pictures to prove it, right here on this hard drive we found at a flea market!

I think your last comment is way off base

[rsilvergun]

probably 80% of /. users have boobs, and we _still_ get lousy service!