INLSA
Those of you who were lucky enough to get a new computer for Christmas might be looking for a way of getting rid of your old one.
Depending on its age and condition, it may be of use to a family member, friend or charity. You might even decide to sell it. At the very least, it should be recycled and not dumped in a landfill, as computers contain materials that are hazardous to the environment.
Whatever you do, you must ensure nothing confidential is left on the computer and to do this you need to go a bit further than simply deleting files and emptying the recycle bin. Even formatting a disk is not enough. It’s easy to recover files deleted this way using freely available tools such as Piriform’s Recuva from www.recuva.com
Computers and their associated storage devices carry a host of sensitive information, from e-mail messages and private photos to confidential corporate documents.
Breaches of privacy and crimes such as identity theft are common, fuelled in part by the widespread use of digital storage. It’s vital understand the risks involved before you dispose of a computer.
As a disclaimer, let me state there is only one 100 percent failproof way to render a computer’s data irrecoverable and that is to remove the hard drive and physically destroy it. Or, if you’re a geek like me, you might want to disassemble the hard drive bit by shiny bit, seeing how it works and retrieving the super-strong rare earth magnets inside. There’s a guide for you at www.tinyurl.com/ diskdestruct.
Of course, the computer won’t work again unless you replace the hard drive, but they are relatively inexpensive to buy new. I’ve never gone this far to protect my own privacy, but I routinely destroy server and hard drives for corporate customers. Deciding whether you should take such drastic action is down to the potential cost of your data falling into the wrong hands. I’ve assessed the risk to my own privacy, and whenever I dispose of a PC I’m confident that using the software tool described below provides sufficient peace of mind.
Wipe it clean: Data can be removed from a hard drive using file “shredders” or “secure erase” programs. These write random data to the disk in a series of repetitive passes. By overwriting a file several times with useless information, you remove all traces of the original data and even advanced recovery processes would be unable to retrieve anything useful.
A program called Darik’s Boot and Nuke “nukes” your hard drive data, securely wiping the entire disk. Download it via www.tinyurl.com/dbootnuke2012 and there is a how-to guide at www. tinyurl.com/DBANguide.
Please get professional advice before using this software, if necessary, and ensure you have backed up the data you need before you erase a hard drive. Using this software will destroy programs and data on your computer and all software will need to be re-installed.
You may decide there’s little data of concern on your old PC, and a simple, but secure, clean-up is sufficient. CCleaner from www.piriform.com/ccleaner is ideal for simple removal of internet-use history, recently used documents and other traces of activity, both online and on your computer.
See next week’s column for more on this and other utilities to “sanitise” a Windows computer.
