Jade Theater

Computers wear out, become obsolete, get damaged and are otherwise rendered unusable from one cause or another every single day. Sometimes users will use these old machines for parts, but most of the time, they end up being taken to the dump. Because they contain significant amounts of metal and a number of harmful chemicals, they are not deposited into landfills. Instead they need to be recycled and the valuable metals reused, while the hazardous chemicals are collected and kept out of the environment. Often they sit at a collection point at the dump or waste transfer station for days or even weeks before being sent onward for recycling.

If the computer broke down, it was likely because of a sudden hard drive failure. If it was still working when it was discarded, then the contents of the hard drive were probably erased to prevent the owner’s personal information and files from falling into the hands of identity thieves. Unfortunately, neither a failed hard drive nor the intentional erasure of data actually prevents a determined identity thief from recovery almost everything you ever stored on that computer.

Through a process known as hard drive data recovery, information can reliably be extracted from failed hard drives. Erased data can also be recovered. In fact, most disk erasures don’t erase files at all. They just erase a portion of the hard drive analogous to a table of contents so that the computer can’t locate the files even though they remain untouched.

A top data recovery service can pull nearly all the files, photos, documents and other data from the hard drives that remain in these discarded computers. In fact, it’s a relatively inexpensive process. In most cases, if someone physically removes the hard drive, they can mail it off to a data recovery house and have the files sent back to them in just a couple of weeks. That data can be all of your financial records, social security number, personal photographs, and anything that you ever put on your computer. What’s more, if the data recovery house fails to recover any files at all, some of them won’t even charge the sender any fee at all.

For an identity thief, that’s like gold. With this information, they can either access your existing financial accounts or, if they are smart, open new lines of credit in your name that you’ll never even know about until they go past due and the bank comes looking for you. By that time the original culprit is long gone.

To protect your data when disposing of an old computer, take out the hard drive and destroy it. Short of that, very little can be done to prevent your files from being recovered by someone who’s very determined to get them.