Throwing out your old computer? Deleted all your personal information? Are you sure? - asks Peter Clarke from PC PAL
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office purchased devices from auction sites such as eBay and computer fairs and out of the 200 hard drives collected 11% contained personal information.
The watchdog also stated that at least 2 of the hard drives had enough information on them to enable someone to steal the former owners’ identity.
With more and more companies encouraging us to be a paperless society most people keep more information than they realise on their computer. This includes the obvious: bank statements, utility statements etc but also the not so obvious: cookies which may fill in your passwords for you and therefore be desirable in every day computer use but are even more desirable to someone who wants to steal your identity or have access to your bank account.
Most people assume pressing ’delete’ removes the data from their hard drive but this is not the case. Emptying the recycle bin is a good first step but to really be safe there are a number of other steps that need to happen.
A good computer engineer will have a ‘personal information removal package’ which includes making a back up of your information before taking other measures such as running software that will completely remove all information on your hard drive.
If your intention is to sell your computer it can then be restored to the clean ‘as new’ state by reinstalling Windows.
If you have questions regarding this or any other computer issue or you would like to book a service for your computer then contact PC PAL on 01264 931000, email [email protected] or visit www.pcpal.co.uk
