Battleangel

Old hard drives yield data bonanza. I mean, come on, we’ve all done it once or twice .. stolen personal information from other unknowing people through their sloppy sense of security. Like in a way to punish them for their neglect.
What the article deals with is second hand hard drives and that people very seldom try to dispose of the data before selling them off. They think that a ordinary “format c:” is enough to preserve their privacy. Well, think again .. And now, students from MIT have proven what any power-user already knew, that data can be recovered.

“.. they found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, medical reports, detailed personal and corporate financial information, and several gigabytes worth of personal e-mail and pornography.”