A data recovery firm based in the UK, Disklabs, recently reported that roughly one seventh of all re-sold computer memory sticks and hard drives had a certain degree of data storage containing pornographic material still on them.
Disklabs found this to be the case when it checked the integrity of the many files it comes in to contact with every day, simply by viewing images and movies. This company also reported that it discovered two pedophile cases per year, subsequently informing the police.
Recently Disklabs bought 50 memory cards and 100 hard disk drives on eBay, testing a small batch to investigate what still remained on them. Potentially sensitive and private information such as CV’s and accounting spreadsheets with names and mobile numbers were found with relative ease.
Previous owners of the computer hardware failed in their attempts to fully remove their temporary internet data opening the way for unscrupulous people to access and use the stored information. Much of the content viewed was pornographic.
Simon Steggles, the director of Disklabs, pointed out the fact that the majority of people getting rid of their hardware were ignorant of the very real fact that data that has been deleted is easy to get retrieved. Deleting and formatting data does not do enough, data needs to be properly erased completely.
With these findings in mind Disklabs contacted all the owners of the undeleted information only to find most people didn’t care about the low level of data loss . All the storage devices were subsequently erased in the right manner, many now being used by Disklabs for further data recovery operations.
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