KPTM FOX 42: Omaha News, Sports and Weather; kptm.com |Computers and Cell Phones a Treasure Trove for Thieves and Blackmailers

Jonathan Athens

OMAHA (KPTM) -- When you give away your old computer or cell phone, you may be giving up more than you think.

A Fox 42 Special Report shows how easy it is for computer-saavy thieves and blackmailers to access and extract private information.

"People can get that information and if it gets in the wrong hands, it can be used against you," said Peter Coons, of D4 Discovery, a company that specializes in computer forensics.

Experts at D4 Discovery analyzed discarded cell phones and computers that Fox 42 borrowed.

Coons found personal financial data, photographs, business emails and instances, he found data suggesting that the computer's former owner may have been visiting online sex chat rooms.

Information such as that, Coons confirmed, could be used for blackmail.

Since 2005, more than 345 million documents containing sensitive personal information have been involved in security breaches, according to privacyright.org.

Among the four cell phones examined, Coons found text messages containing passwords from the phone service provider notifying the owner that the password had been changed. He also found lists of contacts on that phone.

"You know there can be some very sensitive information in texts as well," Coons said.

Experts say, to protect your data you can buy self-encrypting hard drives or you can take your computer to professionals who can magnetically scrub your hard drive. However, the one sure-fire way of making sure no one can access your private information is to have your hard drive shredded.

EDT Recycling in Omaha uses a heavy duty shredding machine to do that. Hard drives are fed into the machine and within minutes the drive is reduced to mangled strips of metal, making data recovery impossible.

Brian Gobbels, EDT Recycling President, said professional recyclers will always issue a numbered Certificate of Disposal for every drive they destroy.