Obliteration means cracked#
Obliteration means Pc#

The risk to the company that owns or owned the data is that it remains responsible for the data even when it leaves its hands. Anyone who mounts that shard and scans it can access the information. This puts hundreds of millions of people’s confidential data at risk.Įven when a hard drive is shattered, a piece of it the size of a fingernail holds more than 100Gb of readable information. There are in-depth recovery companies that can recover information from hard drives, even if they have been smashed to pieces.

Others believe that taking a sledgehammer or similar to the equipment will destroy all the data. Their most common method is to drill three holes in the hard disk, a method upheld as the standard by a major high-street bank. All (or, at least, most) are well-intended and may even believe that they do indeed destroy all the data held on the devices. Many businesses offer safe destruction of hard drives. > See also: UK gov demands destruction of Guardian hard drives The penalties of data falling into the wrong hands include fines and the PR nightmare of a thorough reputation drubbing. Not such good news for businesses or individuals who think their data is irretrievable when they dispose of hardware.

Obliteration means Pc#

Good news for James Howell, the man who sent his old PC to landfill before realising the Bitcoins it contained had increased in value to around £4 million(assuming he can ever find it again).

Obliteration means cracked#

It also recovered data from a cracked and singed hard drive that fell to Earth from the Space Shuttle Columbia. Kroll Ontrack found that 60% of computers processed by so-called data-removal specialists still contained data from the previous owner when it released them for sale on the second-hand market. Data – and the hard drives that store it – is more resilient than you think. overwriting data, do not actually erase data but rather simply cover it up with code.

Many of the devices sold each year will be to replace retired PCs that may subsequently be sold, recycled or otherwise disposed of. However, for all the high-profile news and constant barrage of messages urging us to protect ourselves, our businesses and countries, there is an enormous area of security that is believed to be safe, but constantly falls between the cracks.