Office photocopiers and multifunction devices (that scan, print, fax, and copy) have a hard drive embedded in them. As you feed documents in, it stores the images on the hard drive. It then prints the images from the disk.
When a photocopier is replaced, the used one can be resold. The used copier still has the hard drive with all the document images intact. The hard drive can be removed and the images retrieved.
Think of all the sensitive information that gets copied: employment records, medical records, tax returns, and financial account information. It’s all stored and available to those who would desire to retrieve it.
CBS News recently purchased four used copiers, removed the hard drives, and recovered documents about sex offenders, financial statements, and documents with Social Security numbers.
It’s not a new story. Computerworld interviewed the president of Sharp Document Solutions in 2007, where he expressed concern about identity theft through copiers and intelligent printers.
A better way
It’s a great opportunity for a manufacturer of copier machines to redesign the device so that it uses random-access memory (RAM) instead of a hard drive. Data stored in RAM is lost when power is removed. RAM is the main memory in computers and is <$100 for 1GB, which would seem to be plenty for the typical office copier. The copier maker could charge a premium for a RAM-based data-safe copier. (Are you listening Sharp? Xerox? Ricoh?).
Other storage devices
Hard drives are difficult to fully erase. The “delete” function in Windows, merely moves a file to the “Recycle” bin. “Emptying” the Recycle bin merely deletes the file name from the directory list. The file can still be recovered with a DOS-level function. Fully wiping a drive requires writing to every itty bitty bit on the drive.
Hard drives are one form of information storage, but there are others.
Flash memory — like the kind found in “memory sticks” — is now embedded in virtually everything you plug into the wall or has batteries: cameras, cell phones, MP3 players, voice recorders, pagers, game boxes — just to name a few. I’m convinced that one day even my toaster will have an IP address. iPhones now have banking and financial apps for mobile transactions. It’s safe to bet that the transactions are secure, but what about the data stored on the device. When the device gets recycled, can that information be cleared? Do people bother to delete it? Does “deleting” a file really make it unreadable?
CD’s and DVD’s are a common way to back up computer hard drives. Do you know where your back up disks are? I’ve moved a few times over the years, and I’m sure I’ve lost some along the way. I’ve probably also lost some 3 1/2″ disks (and even some 5 1/4′s — but that tells you how old I am).
Information protection will become more important as we move further into the information age. We need to consider the “cradle-to-grave” of our digital bits. We need to be careful how we create, distribute, store, and ultimately destroy our digital records.
Tip o’ the green shade to Bill Winterberg at FP Pad, who brought the issue to my attention.
Image credit: jzawodn of Flickr.
Carnivals: This post was included in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance hosted at PopEconomics.
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