JAKARTA – A recent study from the company cyber security Kaspersky found that most of these second hand devices had not been completely erased when they were sold, leaving the risk of their previous owners’ information being accessed by third parties.
Over the course of two months, Kaspersky researchers analyzed more than 185 devices storage media, such as memory cards and hard drives, and found that 90% of the data remained on these devices.
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Of the 90% data entry, 16% provide direct access to the information, while another 74% are extracted using file carving – a method for recovering files from non-addressable space on the storage medium.
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The data found ranged from calendar entries containing meeting notes to personal photos and videos, even tax documents, banking information, login credentials and medical information, all of which would be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.
17% of devices also had virus scanners installed, meaning users who purchased a used device could potentially inherit their previous owner’s malware.
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Head of GReAT, Europe, Marco Preuss, said basically you should always store data on personal devices in an encrypted state, in case the device is lost or someone gets unauthorized access.
“When personal data falls into the wrong hands, it can harm not only yourself, but also your friends and family or even your company, depending on what type of information is found,” he said.
To make sure your data is completely erased when selling used devices, the following recommends.
1. Make sure the place where the files are stored should be overwritten. Overwriting, which is called ‘crushing’, can be performed by a program specially made for it.
2. Some security solutions, having this type of data removal tool in device’s File Shredder, will ensure that the selected data is overwritten so many times that it can’t be recovered.
2. You can also use Windows’ own built-in data deletion tool, Cipher, which is usually used for encryption, but can also be used to delete files from the hard disk or make them unusable.
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