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[video=youtube;UVL2bH6wedo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVL2bH6wedo[/video]
SINGAPORE: Delete all personal information on computer - check. Reformat hard drive - check. Send hard drive to IT shop to clean it again - check.
After all those preventive steps, you would think that all your personal data including private pictures, bank and credit cards details would be wiped and safe from prying eyes.
Well, think again.
Channel NewsAsia documentary The Trash Trail investigated and discovered nude pictures, passport details and even blueprints from a marine engineering company on hard drives that had been reformatted and declared ‘clean’, before being re-sold to consumers.
The documentary also surveyed 1,000 Singaporeans to find out what they did to their electronic devices such as computers and tablets before discarding them - and surprisingly, about 24 per cent of them did nothing, while 37 per cent only reformatted it once.
The episode airs on Monday, Feb 20, at 8pm (SG/HK).
To find out if one’s information is truly deleted from used hard drives, Trash Trail producers bought nine used hard drives from different shops at Sim Lim Square. All the shops said the hard drives had been reformatted, with all information erased.
One salesman said: “(Sometimes) the users’ computer is not able to start up, so they cannot clean it up. When we purchase it, we will use our software to clean it up, to make sure it’s empty before we sell it second-hand.”
The nine hard drives were handed over to Associate Professor Biplab Sikdar from the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore to evaluate. He specialises in how data can be safely transferred, stored and accessed.
The results were shocking. Dr Sikdar found personal information on five of the hard drives, and three had compromising personal photos on them.
They included nude pictures of someone who had presumably gone for plastic surgery. “Personally, I was very shocked to find these kind of … embarrassing and compromising pictures,” he said. “If it went to the wrong person, they might easily blackmail you.”
He also found the passport details of a person with his date of birth, medical records and another person’s bank details - all of which could be used to steal someone’s identity.
And he retrieved sensitive corporate materials from two hard-drives which once belonged to a big offshore marine engineering firm.
“They make ships. And what surprised me was that I found blueprints for the ships here.
“I would have thought that an industry, when they’re disposing of their older laptops, they would be more careful in cleaning up their stuff,” he said, adding that the information could potentially be used for fraud or corporate espionage.
While Dr Sikdar verified that all the nine hard drives had been reformatted, he was able to use software that is easily found online to extract the information.
“Think of your disk like a library… When you delete or format your disk, what happens is that the catalogue is gone. But the books are still there,” he said.
There are several ways to completely destroy your data on a hard drive, he said.
This includes degaussing the hard drive with a powerful magnet at a computer centre to wipe them clean, using software to overwrite all the info, or smashing the hard drive to bits.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news...reformatted-hard-drive/3531674.html?cid=FBcna
SINGAPORE: Delete all personal information on computer - check. Reformat hard drive - check. Send hard drive to IT shop to clean it again - check.
After all those preventive steps, you would think that all your personal data including private pictures, bank and credit cards details would be wiped and safe from prying eyes.
Well, think again.
Channel NewsAsia documentary The Trash Trail investigated and discovered nude pictures, passport details and even blueprints from a marine engineering company on hard drives that had been reformatted and declared ‘clean’, before being re-sold to consumers.
The documentary also surveyed 1,000 Singaporeans to find out what they did to their electronic devices such as computers and tablets before discarding them - and surprisingly, about 24 per cent of them did nothing, while 37 per cent only reformatted it once.
The episode airs on Monday, Feb 20, at 8pm (SG/HK).
To find out if one’s information is truly deleted from used hard drives, Trash Trail producers bought nine used hard drives from different shops at Sim Lim Square. All the shops said the hard drives had been reformatted, with all information erased.
One salesman said: “(Sometimes) the users’ computer is not able to start up, so they cannot clean it up. When we purchase it, we will use our software to clean it up, to make sure it’s empty before we sell it second-hand.”
The nine hard drives were handed over to Associate Professor Biplab Sikdar from the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore to evaluate. He specialises in how data can be safely transferred, stored and accessed.
The results were shocking. Dr Sikdar found personal information on five of the hard drives, and three had compromising personal photos on them.
They included nude pictures of someone who had presumably gone for plastic surgery. “Personally, I was very shocked to find these kind of … embarrassing and compromising pictures,” he said. “If it went to the wrong person, they might easily blackmail you.”
He also found the passport details of a person with his date of birth, medical records and another person’s bank details - all of which could be used to steal someone’s identity.
And he retrieved sensitive corporate materials from two hard-drives which once belonged to a big offshore marine engineering firm.
“They make ships. And what surprised me was that I found blueprints for the ships here.
“I would have thought that an industry, when they’re disposing of their older laptops, they would be more careful in cleaning up their stuff,” he said, adding that the information could potentially be used for fraud or corporate espionage.
While Dr Sikdar verified that all the nine hard drives had been reformatted, he was able to use software that is easily found online to extract the information.
“Think of your disk like a library… When you delete or format your disk, what happens is that the catalogue is gone. But the books are still there,” he said.
There are several ways to completely destroy your data on a hard drive, he said.
This includes degaussing the hard drive with a powerful magnet at a computer centre to wipe them clean, using software to overwrite all the info, or smashing the hard drive to bits.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news...reformatted-hard-drive/3531674.html?cid=FBcna
