Friday, April 30, 2010

Identity theft just became much easier!


I was surprised - and very angry - to see the report below. CBS News has uncovered a new risk to our personal information of which I wasn't aware, but which might explain a great deal of the identity theft that appears to take place. I think this report is a 'must see' for anyone concerned about their personal security.







A print version of the report can be read here.

I hope readers will spread the word about this report to their families and friends. If we can alert our employers, doctors, pharmacists, and others who routinely use such copiers for our personal information, we can at least minimize the danger as far as we're concerned.

Peter

7 comments:

Noons said...

500 bucks for a delete button?
hmmmm, funny spelling for "rip-off"!!!!

The amount of private data irresponsibly kept since the generalization of the "digital" revolution is staggering.

Even those who are responsible for knowing what's going on have absolutely no clue...

And now they want us to go into the "cloud"?

Anonymous said...

Another reason not to use your employers copy machine

Anonymous said...

We had some foreign guests the one time. They took the hard drive out of the photocopier they rented when they left. (I assume they paid for it.)

Makes you think.

Jim

Snowdog said...

I'm a copier tech, and my company (not one listed in the story) also heavily pushes the encryption kits. The cost isn't that much-but most folks don't care to spend even a nickle more. So there is an option coming down the pike in the user tools where you can have it rewrite over the same spot the document was after each print.

I also make a habit of doing a reformat whenever I'm there when we're swapping a new machine for an older one. Many of our more security aware customers also have it written in their contract that we'll wipe the HD and reformat when we pick up their old machine.

Jay said...

The other thing that most people don't know is that most times deleting something doesn't delete.

Due to the way things are stored on the hard drive reformatting can often be negated by those same forensics tools.

There are specific ways to wipe drives that require time such as the 7 pass wipe, or 20 pass wipe where it writes information to every cluster of the drive in a specific pattern. Most places that "erase" the information don't perform these techniques and don't actually safeguard your data.

Jay

Anonymous said...

Your would think it would be easier to just pull the HD and destory it.

PeaceableGuy said...

My solution to the ID fraud situation was to get a spare credit card through a local bank or credit union (the cards are treated like cash, with no balances carried), then freeze all reports with the credit agencies.

(posted this comment in the wrong thread earlier, sorry!)