Survey: 75% Second-Hand Hard Drives Contain Data

Used hard disks and smartphones through Amazon, eBay and Gazelle offered often turns personal data to be outdone, such as photos, videos, e-mails, call details and SMS and instant messaging, according to research from the Blancco Technology Group and Kroll Ontrack.

After more investigation showed that 57 percent of mobile devices and 75 percent of the discs actually an attempt was made to remove the material, but these attempts were not successful. The research also shows that simply deleting files on a hard drive users mistakenly feel safe. With four of the remaining data disks were the data via the delete button or by moving the deleted files to the Recycle Bin.

It quickly or completely format an old hard drive are commonly used but unreliable methods, the researchers said.Analysis showed that 61 percent of the disks where data remains were found the command "quick format" was used.

Smartphone

Another problem is also difficult to remove data from smartphones. At 57 percent of the smartphones with leftover data was tried to remove, but there were a total of 179 text messages, 252 IM and 75 great photos behind. In total 10 838 2153 e-mails and text messages and instant messages were found on the analyzed devices.