Computer Recycling Center July, 2003 Newsletter

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	JULY, 2003 New California law, Special CRC offer, repeat of important tips for cleaning hard drives. For July we want to update the "Data Destruction" and "Wiping your Data off your Hard Drive" information. On July 1st, a new law went into effect in the State of California that requires institutions to notify private individuals if their personal information has been compromised or hacked. It brings up the same issues of personal and private information. SPECIAL CRC SERVICE FREE OF CHARGE in July and August: CRC will use Department of Defense-type data erasure software on all re-usable hard drives (HDD) donated to our computer collection campaign. The HDD can be in-or-out of the computer. Unusable drives and drives too small to reuse will be physically destroyed and recycled for the metals. You will receive a charitable, tax-deductible receipt for your donation. In-or-out of the Computer: If you take your HDD out of the computer, please wrap it carefully in bubble wrap to protect it from shock-damage and send it in a box. If you would like to send us the whole computer, please pack it with bubble wrap all around in a box. Send it to us by UPS brown, or US Mail parcel post, to: Computer Recycling Center 2971 Mead Ave. Santa Clara, CA 95051 Be sure to include a Stamped-Self-Addressed-Envelope and we will return your donation receipt. If you request, we will send you a certificate of destruction, based on our use of the certified program. Don't let your personal information get into the hands of a thief!!!!!! Next - important repeated information from June's Newsletter: Identity Theft Identity theft is a horrible crime. By taking some of your personal and private information a thief can steal from your bank accounts, charge items in your name, and damage your credit. One place where you may have personal information stored is on your computer. If you have phone numbers, social security numbers, or financial information like bank account and credit card numbers, or your mothers maiden name, you are LOOKING FOR TROUBLE if you do not DESTROY that information. Here are my suggestions for destroying your information & fighting this crime. Files on REMOVABLE MEDIA (floppy disks, burned CD-ROMs, ZIP & Tape Drives, etc.): The most foolproof method is to destroy the media by chopping up, shredding, or breaking up the media. If you wish to reuse the media you can use data destruction software to overwrite the media with multiple (3+) passes (See information below for data destruction overwrite software). Getting Rid of your Old Computer? or Changing your Hard Drive? Clean off your files! If your hard drive is small (2 gigs or less) you can consider 'degausing' the drive (running an electromagnet across and around the harddrive). This destroys all data, and also makes the drive UNUSABLE junk. DO NOT DEGAUSS IF YOU WANT TO RE-USE A HARD DRIVE. A friendlier way to destroy data, and still be able to REUSE the drive is by using software application programs like: Troubleshooter, Active@Killdisk, DataEraser, or WipeDrive, etc.. 1) The program Troubleshooter (call 800 653-4933; Matt McClure, ext. 1243) is DOS bootable and checks many aspects of a computer. It contains a "low-level initialize" utility that zeroes out the hard drive and the master boot record, while maping the hard drive and identifying any bad sectors. It overwrites the drive AND tests it at the same time. 2) Active@Killdisk: Runs from diskette (boot your system from this disk). Runs from DOS. Zeroes out the hard drive and the master boot record. A FREE download version is available from the LSoft Technologies website, www.lsoft.net. Easy to work with. Can manually do multiple passes. Professional version that conforms to US Department of Defense 5220.22-M available for purchase on website. Does multiple passes of overwrite with 0's, 1's, and random data. 3) DataEraser: Runs from diskette; runs from DOS. Zeroes out specific partitions of a drive, or overwrites the entire drive. More information is available from the Ontrack Software website at www.ontrack.com. 4) WipeDrive: Boots from DR DOS diskette. "Sanitizes" all data. Unlimited number of disk wipes per license. Try product or purchase license at "White Canyon Software" website at www.whitecanyon.com. 5) Norton (Symantec) provides a wipe-info utility. It is selective, and we were not able to wipe the master boot record and DOS boot record. Please see the "Symantec" website at www.symantec.com for more details. Remember: When you have equipment to donate for reuse, working or nonworking, it has a better chance for reuse if you leave all the parts in it. All trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective companies. Thanks for reading, and check out the rest of our site. Regards! HOME \| DONATE COMPUTERS \| APPLY FOR A COMPUTER SATURDAY FUNDRAISERS \| CRC INFO \| CRC NEWS \| CONTACT Š 1991 - 2003 Computers & Education and Computer Recycling Corporation. All rights reserved.