Re: What about OLD computers??

[Dossy Shiobara <dossy -at- panoptic -dot- com>]

cupton -at- syclone -dot- net wrote:
> I work with a charity that accepts old computers, and if they come with do
> drives they are useless to us. Most charities have no budget (or
> personnel) for hardware repairs. Really, what are the odds that someone is
> going to break into a modest non-profit office and try to phish
> information from someone's old computer?

Break in?  Pretty low.  Take a machine received from such a charity and
run data recovery on it?  I bet it's more than you realize.

Recovering someone's old Quicken data off an old drive and then
brute-force password cracking their master password that's used to
encrypt the saved online account passwords can be worth a lot,
especially when the recovery software is mostly automated and can just
be left to run.

In general, it's a good practice to change the passwords for all your
important accounts when you dispose of a drive with that kind of
sensitive information on it, no matter how securely you think you
disposed of it - unless, as I said in another email - you melt the drive
platters into slag.

-- 
Dossy Shiobara              | dossy -at- panoptic -dot- com | http://dossy.org/
Panoptic Computer Network   | http://panoptic.com/
  "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
    folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)

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