Adrian's musings
Should we trust our Banks?
Posted 08-26-2008 at 03:00 PM by Adrian69702006
Today it was reported in the news that an IT specialist had unwittingly bought a computer for £35.00 on ebay, the hard drive of which contained thousands of bank account details, mobile phone numbers and addresses. Luckily it fell into honest hands. But for the grace of God it could have been otherwise thus - and then what might have happened? It scarcely bears thinking about. In fact the whole episode seriously raises a question mark over whether or not we should trust the banks with our personal data if there is the remotest likelihood of its security being compromised in such a way.
Total Comments 3
Comments
 |  Sheesh, that is frightening!  I was once told by a friend with experience in hacking and computer security that the best thing to do with an old hard drive was to hit it with a hammer a few times before trashing it. As that was the best way to ensure any data still left on it would be unaccessible or undecipherable. However, since my mattress doesn't offer any interest, banks do seem to be the only game in town.  |
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| | Bashing hard drives with a hammer may not render them totally useless, as the disc could be removed and put into a good drive - this is how they can get back your data if the drive electronics are fried - but at a price. However, taking the case apart and wacking the disc will finish it off completely - had to do this in a UK prison once to make sure it was really unreadable! A fool-proof way is to drill several holes through the case and disc - this totally ruins them, and is the method used by one UK Local Authority that I have dealings with |
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| |  not totally... you still may be able to recover segments of the data, or files. I generally burn mine, then use them for target practice. |
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Recent Blog Entries by Adrian69702006
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