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Jan 28, 2009
Seems that undeleted information stored on discarded computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices has a habit of re-surfacing and biting its previous owner in the backside, especially if that owner is the U.S. military. The U.S. Defense Department now has to figure out how a an MP3 player containing 60 Army files that included the names and details of American soldiers found its way to an Oklahoma pawn shop, New Zealand broadcaster TVNZ reported this week.
A 29-year-old native New Zealander bought the player for $18 and found that it contained lists of soldiers based in Afghanistan, those who have fought in Iraq, and cell phone numbers for soldiers based there and at other U.S. posts overseas, TVNZ reported. The station said that neither the U.S. Army nor the American embassy in New Zealand would comment on the situation.
Nov 11, 2008 | 5
Think you deleted that sensitive data before selling your PC? Think again.
More than half of people who toss computers in the garbage or sell them are leaving sensitive data on their hard drives, making it possible that a snoop could steal their identities, according to a paper to be published early next year in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry.
Despite the increasing use of personal computers, fewer people are effectively wiping the memory of their discarded PCs, according to the report, written by Andrew Jones, British Telecommunications's head of information security research, and Glenn Dardick of Longwood University, in Farmville, Va. Jones, Dardick and researchers from Edith Cowan University in western Australia and the U.K.'s University of Glamorgan found that only 33 percent of the disks they tested in 2007 had been properly wiped clean of sensitive data, compared with 45 percent in 2006. The researchers plan to have 2008 statistics ready by the end of the year.
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