Did you wipe all your data properly before getting rid of your computer hardware?

In order to discover how well businesses wipe data on end of life devices, Researcher Josh Frantz from Rapid7 purchased 85 used IT hardware including computers, flash drives, phones, and hard drives from businesses. In total, he paid $600.

Astonishingly, only two devices were wiped properly, and three devices were encrypted. He was able to retrieve 214,019 images, 3,406 documents, and 148,903 email messages from all the devices he purchased.

In an attempt to sift through all these data for potentially private information, he used Python script and PowerShell to identify social security numbers, dates of birth, credit card numbers, and phone numbers. He ended up collecting 611 email addresses, 50 dates of birth, 41 Social Security numbers, 19 credit-card numbers, 6 driver’s license numbers, and 2 passport numbers.

So, how much do these data worth?

To research further about the black market value of the data, Frantz was surprised to learn how cheap it is to buy people’s information on the Darknet. Social security number cost around $1 apiece, while full documents cost around $3. It is obvious to say that data leakage is so common that it has driven down the cost of the data itself.

How to safely dispose of your IT hardware?

From this experiment, we learned the importance of wipe your data properly before dispose of your hardware.  At Easy Hardware Trading, we offer IT hardware a second life so it has always been our priority to have professionals wipe out all the data in the devices when we receive used hardware.