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Wipe your disks folks!
I snagged another 'curb side attraction' - a computer tossed out and waiting for garbage disposal - and give it a good cleaning before taking it inside. It was seriously filthy.
The power supply was defective so I swapped in a spare and the thing booted up! The 250 gig hard drive was *stuffed*. I've just glanced at the contents and there's online games, photos, videos (a 135 gigs of Dragonball Z and the like) - I'm sure I'll find some *interesting* documents when I dig further.
I've found all sorts of things before from legal documents to automatic log-ons for social media sites on some of the systems I've rescued. If you don't destroy your disks you leave yourself open for serious identity theft.
Folks, just because your computer dies doesn't mean your data's dead. If you're going to toss your dead system take out the hard drive and delete the data. Going all Hammer Time on it will do. Most computer cases can be disassembled with a single Phillips head screwdriver and this was a Dell with the practically no-tools required to open so there really wasn't any excuse.
I'll snoop around a bit then wipe the data. I'm a good geek. The computer is old but with a few cheap upgrades I can resurrect it. I wouldn't play Fortnight on it but it'll be fine for everyday use.
-m
The power supply was defective so I swapped in a spare and the thing booted up! The 250 gig hard drive was *stuffed*. I've just glanced at the contents and there's online games, photos, videos (a 135 gigs of Dragonball Z and the like) - I'm sure I'll find some *interesting* documents when I dig further.
I've found all sorts of things before from legal documents to automatic log-ons for social media sites on some of the systems I've rescued. If you don't destroy your disks you leave yourself open for serious identity theft.
Folks, just because your computer dies doesn't mean your data's dead. If you're going to toss your dead system take out the hard drive and delete the data. Going all Hammer Time on it will do. Most computer cases can be disassembled with a single Phillips head screwdriver and this was a Dell with the practically no-tools required to open so there really wasn't any excuse.
I'll snoop around a bit then wipe the data. I'm a good geek. The computer is old but with a few cheap upgrades I can resurrect it. I wouldn't play Fortnight on it but it'll be fine for everyday use.
-m