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'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."
If the information on the hard drive was so sensitive, why didn't the couple destroy it themselves? Even if Best Buy did destroy it, an employee would have had access to it anyway before its destruction. That's a security risk either way.
Help kill corporate productivity!
Tax records? Personal finance records?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Someone who has electronic account statements from their bank and/or brokerage.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Is it Best Buys fault (yes of course, considering the outcome) but the user has to be to blame for not learning how to wipe everything off their drive before handing it over to the big machine to sort out as cheap as possible. Anyway, who doesn't keep everything nowadays. I got so many spare parts from all the computers I've had I should open up my own retail outlet.
My pleasure!!
Ahhhh now this is by far the dumbest comment I have heard. Is he joking? Or does he not know that personal computers as well as business computers are used to assist users in managing things like oh ... taxes, perform banking, store financial records, act as an archive for scanned documents, so on and so forth.
... does this person think computers are used purely for playing games and watching a blue and red bar move as you defrag a hard drive? Or maybe people play games with folders to see how straight they can make the icons?
Or
In my world, computers are used for far more than entertainment, toys and gimmicks. It is a way for people to manage their day to day lives, simplify complex tasks or just act as a way to get away from a paper based society. Well, they can play games just as easy too, but you get the point.
Hard drives are often a wealth of private information and it is up to the person disposing of it to ensure that it cannot be read.
And to the people getting ready to reply with "well that is the problem with computers" or "never keep personal information on a HD". It is akin to countless people (yes there are many) throwing documents like credit card bills or ANY paper information with private information in the trash. Ultimately it is up to the person to ensure he/she SHREDS the documents FIRST before trashing. This is no different than electronic media.
Word of advice to anyone who doesn't do hardware themselves:
If your HDD craters and the system doesn't recognize it as a boot disk and you can't reinstall your OS on the drive, take a magnet to it before you EVER hand it over to anyone/throw it away. If it has even a shred of personal information (which today, they all do) you need to give it a ride on the magical magnet train. It takes literally two seconds. There's nothing wrong with a little healthy paranoia.
And here's another piece of advice: Find someone you know who's good with hardware. If you have hardware acting funny or generally dying on you, talk to them FIRST. Tell them you'll owe them a favor, offer to buy them a rack of beers, whatever the hell you have to do to keep it out of some commerical enterprise. This is what friends are for. If you don't have a friend who has this kind of knowledge... You must be Amish. To which I say, wtf are you doing with a computer anyway.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
isn't so much with the people who unwittingly failed to be uber-1337 and erase and zero-fill and nonsense-fill their hard drive. They are non-technical people, its wrong to expect them to be able to predict this sort of occurence because they arent as paranoid (mostly because they dont know what could happen).
So yeah, they dont know what they are doing. But the situation still shouldnt have occurred because frankly, best buy should do better than that. And if its not the companies failing but instead an individual, then they should know better than that. I know its fairly proselytizing to say that out of the three entities involved, two are wrong and one is right, but look at the relationship.
The people going to the store are paying for a service, they obviously cant or dont want to perform the task themselves, therefore they pay. In return the company has a responsiblity(?) or at least a vested interest in providing them with the service they have come for. Which in this case should have included (at the very least) some sort of fill.
The other possiblity of course is that someone dumpster dived the drive out of best-buy's trash. In which case, its still Best Buy's fault for not clearing the drive.
Can't we all just get along
Its quite easy.
Erasing the data would have been work.
Setting it up again to be able to sell it as a "working computer" would have been more work.
Just taking it and selling it as is: minimum work.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
That's true, and it appears that the couple not only did not have the decency to thank him for his deed but on top of that it appears that they suspect him. The article or they themselves presented it as if the guy is under suspicion for blackmail!
Yet they should be worried because most likely where accessed by the crooks that sold the disk to the good samaritan.
I do not think this is the couple's fault at all. Best Buy supposedly was serviced to erase/destroy the hard drive. In a perfect world, people would take care of destroying their own data. Apparently, in this case, the couple seemingly didn't know how, so they hired Best Buy to take care of this - which is (usually) the next most responsible choice.
excpet Best Buy TOLD them it was destroyed. That's the crux of this issue.
If a gargae mechanic tells you the installed new valves, do you take the engine apart to be sure they're not lying?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're assuming Best Buy sells off this scrap. In reality they should be turning it over to a disposal company (which, in theory, could sell the parts at flea market if not the most upstanding of ethical standards are adhered to.) But as the drive should have had Holes Drilled In it smells more like the monkey in charge of that job at BB chose not to, which strongly suggests it was they who pawned the drive, not corporate masters.
Of course in a moment of doubt, always lean towards the simplest answer: the guy who did it was a really stupid mofo.
Stupid, certainly. Unethical, most definitely. He or she should be sacked and then turned over to authorities for prosecution on theft, sale of stolen property, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I just find it pretty shocking that Best Buy doesn't seem to have any set policy regarding handling of sensitive data.
I work for a small non-profit that refurbishes used computers for re-use, and we wipe every hard drive with an 11-pass system. (Probably overkill, DoD specifies just 7). Every volunteer who works on the computers is trained in how to do it, and in the importance of doing so. It doesn't take much person-time: Hook up the hard drive to a computer, boot from the Knoppix CD, and enter the command. A couple of hours later you have a clean safe hard drive with no trace of the original data.
Any employee capable of replacing a hard drive should be capable of understanding the importance of the data that may be on it.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Kind of kills the resale value, dun'nit?
Data destruction was not the problem. It was probably swiped by someone else in the store *thinking* it was a functional drive, and then hastily sold. Maybe it was the tech who actually worked on the system, but if the drive was crippled enough to need replacement it's doubtful he would have bothered taking it.
This is true, but if your computer hardware dies in a way that the computer won't boot or power on at all, then average non-technical person would have no choice, but to go to some kind of repair shop. And if this shop is dishonest, all kind of things can happen.
I personally never deal with big retail stores when I need to buy some computer hardware. I find that small shops and online ratailers almost always have better price and better service.
If I don't trust them to have done the work, why should I believe those parts came from my car rather than their scrap heap?
Actualy there might a couple more crimes involved. First, bestbuy said they were going top destroy the hardrive. Second, this promise of action was done only in the course of another transaction wich was directly related to the harddrive. This is like a plumber agreeing to fix some busted pipes and haul away the broken ones, getting the broken pipes out of sight to collect payment. Later you find that not only did he not finishing the agree apon work, but apearently some of the pipes replaced were still usable. (the harddrive was accessable, i guess it depends on why it was replaced, were they upgrading or did one of the techs tell them it was bad?)
I guess this could go several ways depending on wich state or locality you live in too. Some areas have laws about securing information away from unauthorized people accessing it. Some areas have even stricter laws about finishing contracted work (scamming the public with services not performed). Some areas have laws about misrepresenting services and making flase claims when doing busisness. I imagine there might be a few more that could apply too. And as mentioned, these usualy are real crimes with real jail time for punishment and severe fines. I also belive they are grounds for a law suite too in some areas were punitive damages are usualy considered. (like in ohio were it apears springfield township is located (near cincinatti) and ohio does have some laws applying to all the above.)
I guess several laws can be applied to this if the city or state will pick it up. It might be that they see it just like they do when you go thu the drive thru and the forgot to give you a fry with your order. It maybe that someone will see the seriousness of this and take it further. It would be nice to see the punk who decided to sell it instead of destroying it spend a few weeks behind bars just to get the message of how important this data can be.
When a customer would bring a computer in to be recycled I would open the cover with them standing there. I'd remove the hard drive and take a drill and put multiple 1/4 inch holes through the hard drive.
I'm sorry, but I find this hard to believe!
You use a drill with a drill bit designed to go through metal and it's platters. Were you using safety glassess/goggles? How far was the customer in relation do you doing this work? Did you mount the drive in a vice? What did you place the drive on in case the drill bit goes through the cast aluminum?
Depending on your age and the job classification (based on employment contract), this activity screams of an OSHA violation.
Life is not for the lazy.
Depending on your age and the job classification (based on employment contract), this activity screams of an OSHA violation.
OHSA! Oh my god! Not OHSA!
And the hundreds and thousands of us who worked and slaved at minimum wage jobs routinely violating rules laugh at you.
Hell, I spent most of my high school years working until 3 AM (a huge violation), cleaning grills and other areas with some of the most caustic acid cleaner you've ever seen (someone got pissed off at a coworker and poured the pink shit on their car. No pain left), lugging vats of 300+ degree oil across the parking lot by myself to dump in the disposal bin (someone dropped the oil on their foot after I left), etc. etc. I'm sure most slashdotters can chime in with similar stories.