Cases of Disclosing Private Information
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The discarding of computer equipment has very serious consequences to the owner as it can lead to loss of information and exposing private information to the public. Proper procedures should be followed when discarding computer equipment s to ensure that confidential information is not left to the general public’s exposure (Arthikeyan et al. 2017). There have been various cases of the disclosure of personal data by discarding of computer equipment; some of the causes include;
In the United Kingdom, there was a case where government top secrets and defense secrets, including information on military camps. The laptop owner had thrown it away in the garbage, and when collected, it was found to contain the information (Arthikeyan et al., 2017). This happened in the year 2005.
In Australia, classified information was found when the national association concerned with information decided to buy discarded computers and carry out an audit on them. That brought to the limelight how people are not careful with how they dispose of their computers once they serve their purposes. Out of the around fifty-two hard disks that were audited, at least a quarter of them were found to have information that was termed to be private.
A state agency exposed thousands of private information belonging to their clients to the public. This information included medical reports, social security numbers and also eve their credit card numbers. This was found out when an audit of the discarded computers was carried out.
Data in the computer should be considered as an asset also. When discarding the computer, the data inside it should be considered separately. They should be ensured that the computer’s data and information are well discarded and don’t get into the wrong hands whatsoever. (Arthikeyan et al. 2017)
References
Arthikeyan, R., & Geetha, D. T. (2017). The strategy of Trible–E on Solving TrojanDefense in Cyber Crime Cases.International Journal for Research & Development inTechnology,7(1), 167-171.
Casey, E. (2019).Digital evidence and computer crime: Forensic science, computers, and the internet. Academic Press.