Note: This article was first published on 5th July 2016.
(Image source: Storage Newsletter)
According to study by the Blancco Technology Group, it found that over two-thirds of storage drives sold on eBay and Craiglists hold some sort of personally identifiable data or even corporate data.
After acquiring 200 second-hand drives off eBay and Craiglists and analyzing them, the study found that 67% of them contained personally identifiable information and 11% held sensitive corporate data, including company emails, customer relationship management records, and even spreadsheets containing sales projections and product inventories.
The graph above shows the breakdown of type of data recovered. Photos made up a large percentage of it, but worryingly, so does social security numbers and financial data.
Further analysis found that on 36% of the drives containing residual data, users attempted to wipe the drive simply by dragging items into the Recycle Bin.
Another 40% were found to only have been cleaned using Quick Format.
And only 10% of the drives were found to have some sort of secure data erasure method performed on them.
What's important to know from this study is that simply deleting data by putting them in the Recycle Bin and emptying it is not enough. Very often, these types of deleted data can still be recovered by data recovery professionals.
We recommend using programs that securely delete data by erasing them and then writing passes of random data over the entire disk, like CCleaner or Eraser. This can prevent data recovery professionals from retrieving your deleted data.
Source: Storage Newsletter
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