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Memories of a Media Card
twistedmoney99 writes "Anyone who has upgraded their digital camera probably has a few older, incompatible media cards lying around — so why not post them on Ebay? Well, if you do, be sure to properly wipe them because the digital voyeurs are watching. Seth Fogie at InformIT.com purchased a bunch of used cards from Ebay and found recoverable data on most of them. Using the freely available PhotoRec application, he was able to extract pictures, movies, and more from apparently formatted cards. The picture is clear — wipe anything that can store digital data before getting rid of it."
Hm, haven't we had this story already with hard disks, some time ago?
I'm not entirely certain it'd work on memory cards, but it works great on hard drives. You can overwrite clustertips, free space, etc. with many passes of psuedo-random data. I think the new version is commercial, so here's a link to an older version: http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/
Well, duh. Smash it with a hammer and throw it in the trash. Is it really worth your time to take more time trying to wipe it, then jump through the eBay hoops to post the damn thing, have them take out their exorbitant fees, deal with shipping it, etc. for $50? Just dump it, buddy.
After reading the article, I wondered how many of these cards are actually stolen?
And I don't mean Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee stolen either.
As for erasing solid state media, I'd feel perfectly safe simply overwriting it with zeroes, one time over.
I realize years ago magnetic media were written sparsely (inefficiently) with sloppy positioning mechanisms, but those days are long gone. I'd be really impressed to see somebody recover overwritten data on a hard drive instead of just talking about it.
As for flash memory, I'll believe it when I see it.
As for leaking information through discarded camera memory cards in the first, place, it's about the 1000th thing down my list of privacy concerns, way down below "binoculars." If you want to see pictures of random people's snapshots of each other, they're all over the web. How many of us really use our digicams to capture super-secret info? I just can't bring myself to care when I know databases of thousands of credit card numbers and SSNs are being bought and sold on the black market.
I'm sure a lot of people don't wipe the camera cards because they don't care if someone gets photos of their pets or disney vacation or drunken stupor. They figure most people - ie. those not interested in writing an alarmist privacy article - will simply wipe and use the card. Unless you're a celebrity, or have a stalker why would you care? You're probably photographed more by traffic cameras these days anyway.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why would I not post them on eBay, even if wiped?
Aren't there data recovery services that recover data from supposedly wiped media (hard drives, memory cards, etc.)?
Besides, how likely are you to to make back the listing fees on used media? Given how the prices are coming down, why would you buy used when you can buy new for only a little more? Brand new 1 GB CF is going for $10, why buy used?
I would be worried that I would lose money selling used memory media on eBay; it would make more sense moneywise to just smash them with a hammer; get some exercise, and anything that was on them is now unrecoverable.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I mean seriously, the discussion shouldn't be about "proper erasure techniques that 99.999% of the public couldn't understand if they tried", it should be about not being such a tight-ass cheap fuck that you have to sell your old drives (flash / hard / whatever) on E-Bay. I mean, seriously, do you need to spend that much effort to net yourself an extra $5 or $10?
I erase my old media with a sledgehammer. Try to recover that, bitch.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Throwing away or destroying manufactured items when they are working and reusable is irresponsible, because it does not attempt to minimize environmental impact.
Used items that are still in demand should be reused as much as possible, to reduce the demand for manufacturing these items (with all the power and waste involved in that) and the size of landfills.
From the paper: (blah blah blah)
I don't normally waste bandwidth or other resources commenting this way ("Me too! Me too!"), but I have to tell you that was the most kick-ass summary and explanation of the problem. Thank you for knowing an intelligent and concise technical reason for seemingly (and massively) redundant re-writing, thank you for having it handy, thank you for citing the most useful passage, and thank you for posting.
Damn, I never have mod points when I need them. I'd have dumped all of them on that posting if Slashcode would let me. +5: "The Poster Credibly Could Have Written A PhD Dissertation On What S/He's Talking About".
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I commit to not smashing ~1 memory card a year the second you get every(hell, some of them) Jim-Bob to stop driving his V8 100 miles to work everyday.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
From the article:
In addition, the fact that some of the cards contained undeleted images is a bit disconcerting. At a bare minimum media card owners should have deleted the viewable images.
Why? Why should they have, if they don't care who saw them? As they said, the images were all of clothed people and disney world and things, worth nothing to anyone but the owner.
Privacy just for the sake of privacy seems to have taken hold of too many people, who do not stop to think - is there any point to privacy in this instance?
Obviously if people did not want images being seen they should remove them; I just object to catiioning users against leaving images with the vague fear that "someone may see thier images" when that may not matter at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Throwing away or destroying manufactured items when they are working and reusable is irresponsible, because it does not attempt to minimize environmental impact.
And burning who knows how much gasoline in order to physically transport an object across the country that weighs something around 2 grams is not irresponsible?
What would be responsible is giving it to an acquaintance or selling it locally on something like Craigslist. Putting it on eBay and shipping it to somebody who may be thousands of miles away is stupid.
And burning who knows how much gasoline in order to physically transport an object across the country that weighs something around 2 grams is not irresponsible?
Except that it's not as if the shipping company is making a special trip just to transport that one object. The amount of additional gasoline or jet fuel required to transport another 2g is miniscule.So, in order of preference:
reuse yourself
give/sell locally
give/sell distantly
destroy
There are other options as well, I'm sure.