According to a new study by the University of Hertfordshire on behalf of Comparitech, a respectable 59 percent of used hard drives sold on sites like eBayhave not been adequately cleaned, resulting in them still containing data from their previous owners.
Comparitech purchased 200 used hard drives, half of which came from the US and the other half from the UK, and ran tests to see how many of them still had recoverable information
The test results are particularly worrying:
- 26% had been cleaned, but the data could easily be recovered
- 17% contained deleted data that could also be easily recovered
- 16% appear to have made no attempt to delete previous data
- Only 26% of the drives had been properly wiped and contained no recoverable data, while 16% were accessible but unreadable.
The disks included a wide range of data, including employment and payroll records, family photos (along with more personal photos and sexual content), business documents, visa applications, password, copies of passports and driver's licenses, transcripts, and lists of students attending higher education institutions.
Comparing the UK with the United States, 29% of British drives showed signs that actions had been taken to permanently delete data, compared to just 23% in the US, while an equal number from both countries showed no sign that any attempt had been made to wipe data before the hard drives were sold.
Data could be easily recovered from 54 percent of the drives that originated in the US and 63 percent of those that originated in the UK.
