Recycling a laptop – Are there any security issues?
People who are looking to recycle a laptop for cash have one inevitable question:
What are security-issues involved?
The main security-issue being the personal data stored on their laptop. If your laptop is refurbished and then sold on will the new owner be able to view the personal data you had stored on there?
The short answer to this question is no.
A lot of people may not know how to erase the data from the hard-drive. Others may not be fully confident that they will be definitely erase all the data stored on there themselves.
All personal data will be removed by the refurbishment company. Recycling companies, such as Mirror Go Green, have the appropriate software to ensure all this data is cleared.
Mirror Go Green uses the internationally recognised blancco software on every laptop they refurbish.
How does Blancco software guarantee all data is erased?
As you can tell from the name blancco it basically "blanks" all of the data on the computer's hard-drive.
The computer memory is laid out in different chunks on the hard drive. The software firstly removes the protection on all these chunks. Enabling all the information to be wiped from each chunk.
Blank information replaces the contents of these chunks. This process is repeated until each chunk of memory is fully replaced with blank information.
Therefore any attempt to recover any old information is impossible. The only thing recovered would be the blank information that was replaced by the blancco software.
There is no risk at all of a new owner discovering any of your personal data.