|
Introduction |
| Modern hard disks can hold a huge amount of data, even one from your 10 or 15 year old discarded computer. People often say “Nobody would be interested in my data!” You might be surprised. | | | Email and social media login credentials are highly prized by hackers. Access to your email account will enable a hacker to reset the passwords on many of your other accounts, such as PayPal, Amazon, social media, cloud storage and possibly even banking (though we hope you use 2 factor authentication for the most sensitive). A list of your contacts would enable a hacker to impersonate you and send them convincing scams. A hacker might be able to pick up snippets of all kinds of data about you, harmless in themselves, but useful in constructing an identity theft attempt. And more. | | | So it’s important that a hard disk never leaves your possession without the data being securely destroyed. | | | Data destruction on SSDs, memory sticks and memory cards requires rather different methods. See my companion guide https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+saely+and+securely+destroy+data+on+SSDs+and+memory+sticks/142798 if that’s your problem. |
|