Today it seems that most people replace their laptop or computer every three to four years. Most people are not aware of the proper way to dispose of their old equipment once they buy their new computer. Before you smash your old desktop or laptop to pieces and throw it in the garbage, please consider the following points to help stop pollution and identity theft.
A lot of us fail to realize that the internal parts of desktops and laptops contain hazardous materials – especially mercury. It’s not advisable to just throw your old computer equipment in the garbage for pickup. The best way to dispose of your old computer is to bring it to an electronics recycler. Many times they will even pay you a small amount of money for the parts they receive.
The biggest and most important thing to remember is your personal information on your computer’s hard drive. Even if you think all of your files are erased there are still ways for criminals to restore the data. The best and easiest thing you can do is open up the case of the desktop or laptop and pull the hard drive out. Then you should physically destroy the drive. It’s better to be safe and not worry about thieves stealing personal information.
If you are planning on donating an older PC to a school or selling it to another person you will need to buy data deletion software. There are many companies that sell the DoD (Department of Defense) standard for data deletion. This is the only way you know the data on the drive is completely gone. You can find these products fairly cheap online or at an electronics store. It’s definitely worth the money in my opinion! Why gamble with your identity?
There have been many cases of high profile people losing confidential and sometimes top secret data. Just recently a hard drive being sold in a market in India had confidential corporate data still intact. Another recent case had top secret US missile information on a drive that was resold on Ebay. Most times a person who buys these secondhand drives isn’t out to steal your identity. But the smart thing to do is play it safe.
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[...] News Sources wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptToday it seems that most people replace their laptop or computer every three to four years. Most people are not aware of the proper way to dispose of their old equipment once they buy their new computer. Before you smash your old desktop or laptop to pieces and throw it in the garbage, please consider the following points to help stop pollution and identity theft. A lot of us fail to realize that the internal parts of desktops and laptops contain hazardous materials – especially mercury. It [...]
[...] Here is the original post:Â The Dangers of Donating or Discarding Your Old Computer [...]
I think that before we will donate our computer, we should erase all the data from the hard drive, and leave it for about a month or two and the data that was erased from the hard drive will not be restored, since even the best data recovery softwares can recover data that is maximum 2 weeks old.
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