Secure Delete Programs
Writen by Gordon Ansell
There was a recent news item on the BBC about how criminal gangs are paying $15 for old hard disks with the express purpose of ’stealing’ the data on it, even if the hard drive has had a reformat.
Windows, in its infinite wisdom, doesn’t actually delete anything. We’re not talking about the Recycle Bin here – where data is stored just in case you really so wish to restore it – but we’re talking about a pukka delete or reformat which, in all probability, you would have thought was final.
All windows actually does is delete the directory pointers and flag the space the files took up as now being ‘available’, so that when a new file needs to be written it could use that space.
There seems to be a lot of emphasis (and software) on making sure we don’t accidentally delete something and that, when we do, we’re given multiple opportunities to get it back again. Yet if we’re dealing with sensitive data we may actually want to permanently delete a file and ensure it can’t be recovered. To do this, we usually have to find some sort of third party secure delete utility.
This is particularly pertinent when we’re disposing of our PCs. The report from the BBC was demonstrating how PCs were being recovered from rubbish tips and the hard drives were being sent to Nigeria. The data was then being recovered and sold to gangs interested in fraud or identity theft. One guy had done a reformat of his hard disk and thought he’d deleted all his data, yet the reporter was able to tell him all his bank account details from the stolen hard disk. The poor guy was astounded.
Of course, this is also relevant if you get your PC stolen: not only will a technician have access to your current data, but they’ll also have access to data you thought you’d delete.
A secure delete program works by overwriting the data many times with garbage before deleting it, so if someone was to recover the sectors of data, they would only actually see garbage. This sort of utility is mandatory in military installations or places where a high importance is placed on security, but personal identity theft or bank account fraud is no joke either.
It’s certainly worth considering a secure delete program of some sort.
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If you found this article useful and want more information on secure delete programs, I have a review of 3 of them here: http://gordonansell.com/r/sdrezine.php |