News On 6 Special Report: Computer Privacy Exposed

By Lori Fullbright, News On 6

TULSA, OK -- When many people get a new computer, they throw away, donate or sell their old one. Businesses will often do the same thing.

Even if you delete everything off of your old computer before getting rid of it, the information is still there.

Every e-mail, picture and website you've looked at is being saved by your computer even if you don't save it.

Most people think if they delete those things, all of it will disappear, but that's not true. The information is still there. It's always there.

[Watch extended comments from Gavin Manes on how a hard drive works.]

The News On 6 bought two computers from pawn shops and got two others from local charities and took them to Avansic, computer forensic experts, who specialize in retrieving digital information.

"We're going into our lab, which is a secure area. We don't let clients in here because we have computers and hard drives and safes," said Gavin Manes, President and CEO at Avansic - Digital Forensics Professionals.

Only two of the computers The News On 6 bought required what Manes calls, "super geekness" to find the information.

[Watch extended comments from Gavin Manes on accessing hard drive information.]

The first computer put to the test, computer number one, didn't require any special techniques. It was donated by a business to a charity. The information was available as soon as we turned it on.

For several reasons, it looked like it had been used by a person who worked in human resources. First, we found hundreds of employees' names, addresses and social security numbers.

"This file would net me hundreds of pieces of information for identity theft," said Manes.

The employees' job evaluations were also on the computer. This showed who was doing a good job, who got disciplined and something else very private - all of their medical records.

"You could take that hard drive, drill holes in it, I can still recover the data. You could smash it with a hammer, run over it with a Hummer, physically tear up the hard drive, burn it, do everything but shred it into dust and I can still get the data off the drive," said Manes.

The next computer put to the test, computer number two, had 250,000 files. This included 116,000 pictures, a ton of which was porn.

Other information found included a man's name and address in Bixby. He filed a protective order and was ordered to pay a bill at St. John Medical Center.

Another man's name, along with his Visa and MasterCard numbers, were on the computer. There was also a swinger's website and even some e-mails sent back and forth.

This computer had different users, maybe even different owners, because there were also a lot of pictures of a woman who was pregnant, followed by many pictures of the baby. There was even a nude shot of her and the baby in the tub, something totally harmless, but not something you'd want strangers to see.

"Things that are maybe private to you, now are made public because you put it on a computer," said Manes.

The third computer put to the test also had several users or owners. It had 400,000 files, including 1,500 e-mails.

A woman activated a credit card in 2007 and she kept a list of every single password and username for all of her accounts. That allows access to her bank accounts, credit cards, her MySpace page, her whole world.

There were a lot of pictures of kids and family and friends in different settings.

There were also other people taking pictures like the ones before, although this time, some gang signs were thrown in as well.

"This person actually emptied their internet history, cleared their cache, but the data is still there," said Manes.

The last computer put to the test, computer number four, also had different users. One of them was a young woman who went to Spartan School of Aeronautics, ordered pizza from Papa John's frequently to her apartment on Southwest Boulevard and bought things from Amazon.

There was also a profile from a man named Michael, a 23-year-old in Beggs, looking for an 18 to 23-year-old woman, along with pornography in large quantities.

[Watch extended comments from Gavin Manes on a misconception from some computer users.]

How hard is it to get rid of this information? Consider the Space Shuttle Columbia when it blew up.

"That was a hard drive in space that burned up, exploded, fell 54 miles to the earth into water and they got all the data that existed on it," said Manes.

If you have a hard drive that is drilled, hammered and set on fire, and then someone finds it, most people won't have the know how or take the time to retrieve the data. But, it is still retrievable.

[Watch extended comments from Gavin Manes on what kind of information is found on a hard drive.]

So, what do you do? It would be a shame to waste a computer when it could help others.

The absolute safest thing is remove the hard drive and take it to a place like Natural Evolution where Manes' team has certified their process of scrubbing the hard drive, then shredding it.

If you want to help a charity, buy a new hard drive for about $40 and then donate your computer.

[Watch extended comments from Gavin Manes on how you can actually destroy information stored on a hard drive.]

Click on our interactive hard drive. It will teach you how to remove a hard drive, how a hard drive works, what happens when you delete a file and an explanation of why this information is so hard to destroy.

EDITORS NOTE: There is software available that helps you remove information off of your hard drive, however, professionals at Avansic - Digital Forensics Professionals say you should NOT delete information from your hard drive if you are or may be facing future civil litigation. You could get into a lot of trouble if you destroy data.

Avansic does not advocate or instruct people to use tools to remove information from their hard drive because of the penalties they may face. Use them at your own risk.

With that in mind, the following types of tools can be very effective in removing information from a hard drive:

• Analog X SuperShredder --- free download
• LSoft Active KillDisk --- free download, professional version available for $29
• Eraser --- free download
• AbsoluteShield Internet Eraser --- free download, or buy for $34
• Click here for list of tools from G4