Data protection and personal information

[JSER]

Now this is an interesting thing.

I have been into IT since CP/M, I used to teach IT and ran an IT charity so I know a litle about computers, and I have raised a few points with LCE and other companies regarding the data protection regulations and pre owned equipment.

Case in hand

Mr S goes to a camera shop and part exchanges his camera/vid camera for a new model
Shop sells his camera used to mr X
Mr X finds photographs of Mr S family, children, house, address etc on card using any available recovery software

What is the law, technically the retaile outlet have broken the Data Protection act, and yes I have spoken to the

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF

Think when you part exchange,

 

[KmH]

The whole world wonders - Why did Mr. S leave the memory card in the camera?

 

[table1349]

They have violated the same laws that would be in place if Mr. S left a roll of film in an SLR or Movie Camera. Mr. S should be charged with Aggravated Stupidity Hold For State Warrant for giving that "data" away.

 

[nmoody]

When Mr S sold the SD card, they also sold all the content of the card. Thats my take on it.

Its similar to throwing stuff away.

 

[KmH]

No doubt, Mr. S failed to do his due diligence prior to handing over the camera to be replaced :thumbdown:, as did the camera shop on accepting the camera from Mr.S. :thumbdown:

Sounds like Mr. X essentially got a free memory card. :thumbup:

 

[Josh66]

No doubt, Mr. S failed to do his due diligence prior to handing over the camera to be replaced :thumbdown:, as did the camera shop on accepting the camera from Mr.S. :thumbdown:

Sounds like Mr. X essentially got a free memory card. :thumbup:

That actually made me laugh. The thumbs up/down were the finishing touch.



If the shop wanted to cover their ass and do everything 100% legal, they should have wiped the card once they discovered it. They would have to overwrite the entire card multiple times, and in some cases that might not even be enough. Their best bet would be to just destroy it, if they really want to cover their ass.

I have read of the same thing happening with computers. Company X wants new computers, so they sell their old stuff and buy new stuff. The place they sell the old stuff to says they wipe the drives and remove all private data, but really they just like saying that - they don't actually do anything to the drive... They sell the HDD to someone else, and - WHOA! - There's a ton of confidential (and in one case I read about, Classified) information in here!

No, that is not typical, and yes - "Company X" is ran by fools.

 

[Garbz]

To what level would you wipe the card? This is a problem that has plagued people all over the world. A format only removes the file allocation table and it would be trivial to recover what was previously on the card.

The same applies to second hand harddisks. A portion of them measured in 10s of percent are sold with previous customer data still on them. An even larger percent of second hand drives are sold with data recoverable from them.

 

[bratkinson]

Wiping stuff off computer hard drives is a problem long addressed in the PC world. While one may think that simply deleting files in Windows is sufficient, absolutely everything can be recovered with not-too-elaborate software. Even a simple 'format' command will leave readable data on a hard drive. The best solution to prevent data recovery is to run a program that writes all 1s and then goes back and writes all 0s on the entire hard drive. Alternatively, remove the hard drive and mash it good with a sledgehammer. As an alternative to the sledgehammer, a bulk demagnetizer will scramble things too. But only do it when the hard drive is 3 feet or more away from the rest of the computer.

The same is true on your camera memory cards. Although a format will wipe off most of the image data, only a low-level format will completely wipe it off. Better still, keep the memory cards safe. And if your new camera doesn't use that style memory card, lock 'em up, give them to your kids to use, or smash them with a hammer.

 

[480sparky38 37]

There are no erasers in the digital word.

 

[KenC]

Alternatively, remove the hard drive and mash it good with a sledgehammer.

I have a small sledge dedicated to destroying hard drives from our old computers. Well, actually it does do some other things as well, but even if it didn't I would keep it around just for this.

 

[IByte]

As a person that does computer forensics, even a completely formatted drive still holds secrets. As mentioned above only a 3 pound sledge hammer and/or drill can destroy information.

 

[480sparky38 37]

As a person that does computer forensics, even a completely formatted drive still holds secrets. As mentioned above only a 3 pound sledge hammer and/or drill can destroy information.

Not true.

Saving your images on ONE drive alone will GUARANTEE the drive will self-destruct.

 

[IByte]

Not true.

Saving your images on ONE drive alone will GUARANTEE the drive will self-destruct.

Information overload sequence count down lol.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

this thread made me LoL

 

[Buckster]

So, for consumer grade recovery software available at this time to get the images off a wiped hard drive, what would you folks actually familiar with them and with recovery recommend? I have a portable hard drive my daughter took with her to Italy, filled with photos, then moved those photos to her desktop machine when she returned, and returned the "empty" portable drive to me. At some point, her desktop drive failed, and she replaced it, so it's gone. I'm thinking after reading this thread that her Italy photos might still be recoverable on the portable drive, if I use the right software to find and restore them.