The story below was aired on WETM channel 18 News in Elmira, NY. The story, as you'll see, was about identity theft from discarding your old pc's with information that you don't think is still on it. Well, WETM called yours trully to do data recovery on some hard drives that were discarded, just to see what we could find for a news story, and we did find alot to go on. Below is the story as it aired and they posted it in print on their website as well, and they included a quote from me in the story too :)

Last Update: 11/29/2006 2:46:10 PM
Posted By: Rachel Rose

Bank account numbers. Social security numbers. Home addresses and more.

It's everything a criminal needs to steal your identity. Chances are, all or most of that information is stored right on your personal computer.

You may think you can just click "delete" to get rid of information on your hard drive before you throw it out, right? Wrong! We went through dozens of old, discarded computers and found everything a thief needs to steal your identity.

Take Margaret Rebarchik of Horseheads, for example. When she threw out her family's old personal computer, she thought she'd erased all the files from the hard drive. What she didn't know was that clicking "delete" doesn't really delete anything at all.

"It's just... it's just very unnerving that this would be out there," said Margaret when we confronted her with all the personal information we retrieved from her discarded computer.

We found Margaret's computer at R.E.A.C.T., an electronics recycling center in Big Flats. Then we took it to CyberDark Computing in Elmira to see just how easy it would be for a hacker to pull up her old files.

In a matter of minutes, we hit the jackpot: account numbers, addresses, phone numbers, employer information, birth dates. The list goes on and on.

"We just ran a simple little recovery that can be easily downloaded online, and recovered all their deleted files," said Phil Dowd, a CyberDark technician.

All it took was the simple click of a mouse and, in an instant, we had everything we needed to steal Margaret's identity. That's something that should be of grave concern to people who own personal computers, according to New York State Assistant Attorney General Michael Danaher.

"I had the opportunity to go through some of the information and you can almost picture the person in front of you when you look at some of the things recovered off the hard drive," Danaher said.

Of course, Margaret wasn't the only one at risk for identity theft. We found discarded computers with tax returns on them... even a copy of a security card with a signature! The risks are enormous, and the results could be devastating.

"A person can use any personal identification information to go into accounts and take money out of the accounts," Danaher said. "They could try to have the accounts transferred over to their names, they could get credit cards in the name of the person, using their personal identification information, and they could create a whole new credit history for that person."

According to the Federal Trade Commission, last year, more than 17,000 New Yorkers reported they'd been victims of identity theft. The same held true for 8,000 Pennsylvanians.

Fortunately, Margaret Rebarchik wasn't one of them. But, she could have been.

"All that personal information is stored on the computer as if it were a file cabinet," Danaher said. "You threw out your file cabinet without destroying any of the papers that were in it!"

A lesson learned in Margaret's book.

"I didn't know this back then, but I do now!"

Labels: News