'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

Destroy it yourself

[crummyname]

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.

Re:Destroy it yourself

[ackthpt]

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.

It's called: "Misplaced Trust in Corporate America"

Why, just look at these words which follow, meant to calm and sooth the worried customer:

"Our company values and places the utmost importance on maintaining the privacy of our customers. We will fully investigate these allegations."

They no doubt came from some tome of boilerplate Corporate Communications and Public Relations.

The real translation behind the scenes is doubtless anything less than a fast call to the law firm Best Buy retains to see how much they could be sued for and another call to the PR department to get the above phrase looked up in the Table of Contents and issued to media outlets. Meanwhile in the board room the executives are probably all bent over, like a circular conga-line holding covers over the arses of those in front of them.

Re:Destroy it yourself

[Frogbert]

Perhaps because they didn't know what a "hard drive" was, save for the box that came with their computer (the screen).

Re:Destroy it yourself

[jeeperscats]

Because most of the people I do computer work for think their "hard drive" is the whole computer.

Re:Destroy it yourself

[sysadmn]

It's not at all unlikely they took a "broken" computer into Best Buy. Best Buy told them it was the hard drive (meaning it almost surely wasn't the hard drive), and replaced it for them. They asked about the old one, and were assured it would be destroyed. Would you have asked to take it home before reading this story?

Re:Destroy it yourself

[andy jenkins]

Because they wanted all their data on their new hard drive.

Somehow I doubt they'd be pleased to give Best Buy their Windows XP box with their applications and data + $$$ just to be handed back a computer with a big blank drive and no OS or a clean XP install.

Their alternative was to back everything up and destroy the hard drive themselves. But then if they could do that they'd have fitted the drive themselves anyway.

Re:SSN?

[ackthpt]

Tax records? Personal finance records?

Re:SSN?

[Detritus]

Someone who has electronic account statements from their bank and/or brokerage.

Re:SSN?

[nuOpus]

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.

Or ... 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?

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.

Re:Scandalous!

[imsabbel]

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.

Not the couple's fault

[itunes keith]

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.

Re:Basic Consumer Practices????

[geekoid]

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?

Re:Scandalous!

[ackthpt]

What could motivate them to sell it is one thiing, but what motivated them to sell it with the data on is surely harder to explain.

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.

Re:SSN?

[pluther]

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.

Re:Scandalous!

[mikerozh]

There should never be an excuse for selling or transfering ownership of a hard drive with pre-existing data when there are fast, free, and convienient utilities that can effectively remove all data without damaging HDD functionality. Physical destruction is of course, the most secure method of permanently wiping data, but for most folks good software based data destruction should be more than sufficient.

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.