Firms should play safe when discarding PCs

Up to a third of discarded computers contain information on their hard drives which could be used to commit fraud, new research has claimed.

Christmas and New Year is a popular time for companies to purchase new computer equipment, says Sainbury’s Bank (SB), though firms should make sure that information is properly stripped from old machines before they are discarded.

Simply deleting the files is not enough. Sophisticated computer hackers would still be able to find any information stored on the machine.

"Overwrite unwanted data by running hard drive wiping software," SB said.

Between August and October last year, SB calculated that around 1.4m computers were discarded without any attempt to wipe or destroy their hard drives.

Meanwhile separate research from Glamorgan University undertaken in 2006 revealed that out of 200 discarded computer hard drives, 118 were still working, of which 10% still had financial details on them.

Donald MacLeod, credit card manager at Sainsbury's Bank, said: "Over the years, you can end up storing a great deal of personal information on your computer so it makes sense to wipe clean or destroy the drive before you throw it away."