Was your organization a victim of identity theft?

08-28-2006 2:13 PM

wcook

Top 50 Contributor

Joined on 12-20-2005

Has your organization ever had sensitive data stolen from its computers? How was it stolen, and what steps have you taken to protect your equipment since then?

One way to safeguard your nonprofit's information is to clean your old computers before you donate them. In Avoid Data Theft: Clean Your Old Hard Drives, we'll show you how to wipe data from your hard drives.

Have further disk-cleaning tips? Share them here.

In reply to

RE: Was your organization a victim of identity theft?

09-06-2006 12:03 PM

region2

Not Ranked

Joined on 09-30-2004

TechSoup Member

Our organization was not a victim of identity theft BUT I do have a question regarding cleaning hard drives. We do not have PCs. All of our computers are MAC computers. We just replaced ancient computers with a G4 and 2 G5's OSx. Is the method the same for MAC computers as it is for PCs?

Kay McCune
Region 2 Arts Council - Bemidji, MN

In reply to

RE: Was your organization a victim of identity theft?

09-06-2006 1:23 PM

bsatterfield

Top 100 Contributor

Joined on 02-16-2006

Kay,

If you want to reformat your Mac hard drive, you are probably going to want to do some Web research on the subject, as it likely varies by operating system and particular Mac (I'm not a Mac expert so I can't be sure. Hopefully one will pop up and answer this question for us both.)

However, if I were you, I would simply download DBAN for Mac, a free utility that will securely wipe away all of your data -- a smarter option than reformatting anyway.

If you want more information on how disk-wiping software works, check out our article "Obliterate Hard-Drive Data with Disk-Wiping Software."

Hope that helps get you started.

In reply to

RE: Was your organization a victim of identity theft?

09-06-2006 4:45 PM

dwelp

Top 10 Contributor

Joined on 06-09-2003

Davenport, Iowa USA

If you don't trust any software solutions, physically removing the hard drive from the CPU case and using the sledge hammer to smash the drive to bits* is as effective on the MAC as on a PC. (don't forget your safety glasses) :wink;

Dave

*bytes might be too large of a chunk

In reply to

The choice should be easy....

09-21-2006 3:03 PM

mroonie

Not Ranked

Joined on 09-21-2006

TechSoup Member

Studies have shown large percentages of companies that do not have security measures in place for erasing data from harddrives. Nor do they realize how big the blackmarket is for hardware that has valuable information stored on it.

Too few companies are willing to evaulate their security standards and take the time or the money to plug up the holes. But either you spend the couple hundred now, or you spend millions patching it up later with lawsuits and bad publicity.

You'd think the choice would be easy....

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Was your organization a victim of identity theft?