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November, 2003
Preparing to Donate Your Computer, or
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION ON THE COMPUTER
WHEN YOU GIVE IT AWAY ??? HOW DO YOU PROTECT YOURSELF ???
So you have upgraded, or purchased a new computer, and you are going to donate
your old one. What's going to happen to all the information on your computer?
How do you protect your personal information and protect yourself from possible
identity theft? It's a good question, and a little scary.
If you are computer savvy you already know how to erase and delete your personal
information, right? Sorry, one more question, and its a no pressure question.
Did you know that each time you registered with the publisher of each new
software program you loaded on your computer, that this information was stored
in the operating system registry? How do you know it has been removed?
If you are computer savvy you may have already reformated your drive or
used a data-destroying utility program to overwrite all information. Otherwise:
a) Ask the group receiving your computer if they will delete the information
off of your hard drive (there may be an extra charge to perform this service)
if they will reuse the hard drive in this system or in another.
b) Ask if they will physically destroy (shred?) the hard drive if they don't reuse it.
A way to destroy data, and still be able to REUSE the drive is by using
data destruction software. Please use your favorite search engine to get to the
website for each of these products to download and use a one-time sample.
1) Active@Killdisk: Runs from diskette (boot your system from this disk).
Runs from DOS. Zero's out the hard drive and the master boot record.
A FREE download version is available from "LSoft Technologies" website.
Easy to work with. Can manually do multiple passes.
Does multiple passes of overwrite with 0's, 1's, and random data.
2) DataEraser: Runs from diskette; runs from DOS. Zero's out specific
partitions of a drive, or overwrite the entire drive. More information is
available from "Ontrack Software" website.
3) WipeDrive: Boots from DR DOS diskette. "Sanitizes" all data.
Unlimited number of disk wipes per license. Try product or purchase license
at "White Canyon Software" website.
Remember: When you have equipment to donate for reuse, working or nonworking,
it has a better chance for reuse if you leave all the parts in it.
All trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective companies.
Check out the rest of our website, and THANKS FOR READING!
© 1991 - 2003 Computers & Education and Computer Recycling Corporation. All rights reserved.
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