The Dangers Of Selling A Used Computer

PITTSBURGH,None — Making a few bucks by selling your old computer may sound like a good idea, but if it ends up in the wrong hands, you could find yourself in serious trouble. In this investigation, I found the kind of information you wouldn't want thieves to get a hold of.

I bought a used computer off of Craigslist. The hard drive had been "wiped" clean, but that didn't stop us from uncovering a gold mine of personal data.

Our computer expert hooked the hard drive up to a data recovery machine to do a forensic analysis. I told him to look for anything a criminal might be interested in.

Keep in mind, the person who sold the hard drive to me said everything had been deleted.

"So this is the hard drive and it says it's wiped, but was it wiped?" I asked Armstrong. He told me, "It was formatted, which means the average person couldn't see the data."

But the deleted files weren't really gone. They were just hiding. Jay Armstrong, the owner of Computer House Call, was able to tap into the memory on the hard drive and restore all kinds of information, including someone's tax return.

We had their name, address, social security number, how much money they made, their bank account number, even their children's social security numbers.

"We have everything, all of the data that they filed, every number. This is exactly what went to the IRS," said Armstrong.

I asked him if you could use that information to blackmail somebody, and he said, "Sure." I went on to ask him if you could use it for identity theft, and Armstrong said for a thief, "A social number, name and address is golden."

We also uncovered hundreds of photos, including pictures of a scantily-clad teenage girl. I could tell she was joking around, but it's something her mother wouldn't want splashed all over the internet.

In the wrong hands this information could be very damaging, and that's why Armstrong told me deleting files isn't enough. They have to be unreadable.

There are high-tech ways to destroy data on a hard drive, but taking a hammer to it is the fastest and easiest way.

"Just take it out to your driveway, take a hammer, and smash it to bits," said Armstrong.

The military uses complex programs that overwrite everything on the hard drive, but smashing it is a lot simpler.

So here's some advice: Before you sell your old computer, take out the hard drive and replace it with a new one, or have the hard drive professionally cleansed, so all the data is erased.

That will assure your personal information doesn't end up in the wrong hands.

The previous owner of this computer didn't have a lot of files on the hard drive, yet we still found a tax return.

Just think about how much damage a hacker could do if this computer belonged to a business, with social security numbers, account numbers or confidential files.

WPXI