Registering/Accounts with online vendors

[Michael]

I've had a couple computers given to me with good data on the drives like
that and seen a lot more pulled from dumpsters. At the bare minimal drives
should be zero'd out and filled with random numbers several times before
being thrashed.

I once had a customer call back and complain that he'd received a
refurbished drive that still had all the last owners confidential business
data on it. I believe he called the original owner.. getting the phone
number from the harddrive.. and they filed a suit against Western Digital.
That's just bad because the person sending in the original drive assumed
that after it was fixed it'd be wiped before being sent back out.

> Hard drives from discarded or broken computers?  I see computers turn up
> in the trash dumps all the time with medical records, emails, databases,
> accounting information for large hospitals, manufacturing, etc., all the
> time.  Sure, they aren't bootable, because the drive boot sector is
> "wiped."  Unfortunately, they still mount with the mount command and are
> quite readable.  The best way to wipe a hard drive is with a 20 pound
> hammer.  I hate to say that, but a person has to ask himself if the
> company's information is worth more than a 2GB hard drive.