Think before donating old computers: hidden info could cause identity theft

You may think you’ve erased information on your personal computer by hitting the “delete” button. But experts say you haven’t. It’s still there.

Before you throw away that old computer or donate it to a charity, make sure you’re not giving away your name, age, social security number and mother’s maiden name, said Lynn J. Bruesewitz.

Bruesewitz, owner of St. Charles-based Software Support Systems Inc., wants people to know that they may be vulnerable to identity theft by unwittingly leaving private information on their hard drives.

“Think of your hard drive as a chalk board,” Bruesewitz said. “You can write over what you’ve just written or move to another space on the chalk board and write in the empty space. Computer hard drives are much the same way. The computer flags things for deletion, but in reality that information may stay there forever.”

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Source: kcchronicle.com
By Tim Kane