Re: [Hampshire] Hard disk destruction

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Author: Andy Smith
Date:  
To: hampshire
Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Hard disk destruction

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gpg: keyblock resource '/var/lib/lurker/pubring.gpg': Permission denied
gpg: Signature made Thu Jan 8 12:10:09 2009 GMT
gpg: using DSA key 2099B64CBF15490B
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 09:17:09AM +0000, Tony Whitmore wrote:
> is it really worth getting people to attack their hard drives with
> hammers? (Never mind the Health & Safety implications!)


No, but I suppose we need some sort of education so that people
understand that a hard drive is probably around as sensitive as a
big stack of letters containing personal details. People are very
aware that they need to shred such letters, but don't think twice
about just putting an old computer with hard drive in a skip.

So in terms of "is it strictly necessary?" No I don't think so, but
it may be the easiest way to educate.

From my limited sample size of non-technical friends and family,
they store a lot of important information on their computers, they
have no backup regime, and they do not practice any sort of data
security (encrypted filesystems, secure disposal of data etc.).

Of course if the disk could be reused then a simple run of DBAN is
safe to a fantastical level of paranoia.

Cheers,
Andy

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