A Richmond, Virginia photographer was arrested by Richmond City Police in September 2005 on 16 counts of possessing illegal pornography, .
The man’s lawyer claimed his client was using a second hand computer he had bought at a garage sale, and had no idea of the pornography.
This is an interesting case, because it highlights the dangers of both buying and selling old computers at garage sales.
For the garage sale seller, the only way you can be sure your private details and data - not just the kind mentioned above (!), but commercially confidential information - remains confidential is to have a professional destroy any data on the computer’s hard drive before you put it up for sale.
These days, ,data destruction is not as hard as it sounds. Yet, a recent study of used computers bought online found that 311 of the 500 investigated contained private and confidential personal information such as tax records, medical records and banking accounts with passwords.
Remember, you never know where your personal information will end up when you get rid of an old computer.
On the flipside, garage sale buyers are never quite sure exactly what might be on a used computer. So it also pays the buyer to first ask the seller if the data has been wiped. And even if the seller says ‘yes’ get the hard drive wiped yourself anyway.
Reputable data scrappers never turn computers on, can now remove 100% of a computer‘s old data.