Couple’s Supposedly Destroyed Hard Drive Purchased In Chicago
A year ago, Henry and Roma Gerbus took their computer to Best Buy in Springfield Township to have its hard drive replaced.
Henry Gerbus said Best Buy assured him the computer’s old hard drive — loaded with personal information — would be destroyed.
“They said rest assured. They drill holes in it so it’s useless,” said Gerbus.
A few months ago, Gerbus got a phone call from a man in Chicago.
“He said, ‘My name is Ed. I just bought your hard drive for $25 at a flea market in Chicago,’” said Gerbus. “I thought my world was coming down.”
Gerbus and his wife had good reason to worry.
A total stranger had access to the couple’s personal information, including Social Security numbers, bank statements and investment records.
Through information listed on the hard drive, the man in Chicago was able to contact the couple.
8 Comments
Oh my gosh! That is totally nuts. Best Buy sucks. The worst job I ever had, and I’ve had lots of crappy jobs.
Supposing that this is a valid account of what happened, why did he not demand that Best Buy give him the hard drive? If they were just going to destroy it, then they might as well give it to him. It was horrible of Best Buy to resell it without re-formatting the drive, but it was stupid of the guy to believe that they would fallow through on their word.
Randy meant to say “follow through”, not fallow. And that does suck what happened to that couple. Lots of people are too trusting, especially older adults who don’t really know that much about computers and think that the 17 year old high school kid working part-time behind the counter at Best Buy can be trusted. Or if the company in itself can be trusted.
Forget about Best Buy or Mr. Gerbal, the stupid one is Ed. Give me a break. When you stumble across someone’s Social Security number along with other financial records, you don’t call and tell them. That’s a golden opportunity. Very few people have the good fortune to stumble across that kind of lucrative information. I’m off to the swap meet this weekend to buy me some hard drives.
Kristi is exactly correct; the guy probably didn’t know enough (both technically and about the infamous BB reputation) to be suspicious, so I can see how he didn’t think to press them on the issue at the time (although I bet he will in the future).
Depending on the timing, BB could have already shipped it off to be sold at that point, so they may not even have had it to give to him (I wouldn’t put it past them).
From an ethical standpoint, it would be wrong of BB to have sold the drive even if it had been cleaned. Additionally, from a technical standpoint, even if they formatted it, nearly all the data would still be easily recoverable. If they actually took the time to securely clean the data off the drive, it would take too long to make it worthwhile to sell it for $25, so they would probably never go through that trouble.
Parts of the data would even be recoverable after the drilling that the BB employee described. If you want to go with physical damage, you would need to incinerate it, but it would be cost prohibitive for BB to do that, unless they sent them to a central facility. There are software tools that will do a multiple pass overwrite to the point where there is basically no chance of recovering the data, but that would take so much time to set up and run that it would not be worth it to make $25.
I like Nick’s comment about Ed, but that wouldn’t actually be the most profit maximizing opportunity; Mr. Gerbus’ credit limit is only so high. If they really wanted to cash in, I’d have Henry and Ed conspire to actually go and misuse the info (anonymously), then either sue BB for allowing it to happen (and release a whole lot more negative press about it) or just threaten to do so, and get paid off from BB to keep it quiet.
crazy
I just want to say that I resent that “older adults” comment. What do you think we are, stupid? I carry all of my old hard drives around in my purse for safekeeping AND I keep all of my secret passwords filed safely on my computer in a stealth file that I call “private don’t look here”. Pretty good, huh. And people think us old people are gullible-techno-dummies! Hah!
i have my old hard disks surgically implanted in my body. lisa is quite pleased with the results, but airport security is a pain.