ATLANTA — Computers are always hot holiday gifts. But before you trade in the old for the new, make sure you’re not leaving a gift for identity thieves.
Many people give their old computers and laptops away to friends or charity. They move their files and pictures to the trash bin and hit delete. But security experts will tell you that is not enough to protect your personal information.
11Alive’s Rebecca Lindstrom spent a day buying laptops from dealers, parents and college kids looking to make some extra cash. We then gave them to security expert Gregory Evans with Hi-Tech Crime Solutions.
He showed how easy it was to retrieve data using common hacker tools, much of it downloaded from the internet free.
On one laptop we found thousands of family photos. It wasn’t the person we bought it from, but a previous owner. Within 30 minutes we had enough information to send her a message on twitter, and Facebook. We were also able to figure out where she lived and at least one place she had worked.
The woman, who we’ll call Brittany to protect her real identity, lives in Atlanta.
“It’s not a good feeling,” said Brittany.
When we told her what we’d found, she was creeped out, but not necessarily concerned, until we reminded her of what we found in the photos.
“It’s actually her foot prints, it’s got her name, date of birth. I could steal her identity if I were a thief,” said Lindstrom, detailing some of the information found in the photos of when her baby girl was born.
“It’s so innocent. I didn’t think about that,” said Brittany.
It’s also innocent to sync your phone with your computer. But if you don’t delete the data, we found it was pretty easy to attach another phone to the laptop and download the backup file. Once complete, we had the person’s emails, text messages, passwords and contact list.
Another trouble spot is web history.
“They can find out where you bank, where you go to school,” said Evans.
That’s why Evan says you should never let the computer save your passwords.
“It automatically fills in your name, your password is covered. You just click login and it logs you in,” he explained.
Evans says the only person who actually managed to remove all of his data was a student from Kennesaw State University. When we bought his laptop he told me he had deleted his data and restored the computer to its original settings.
“When he reinstalled the operating system from scratch, he erased all the data, the formatting, everything,” explained Evans.
Evan says if you plan to throw the laptop away destroy the hard drive.
If you want to sell or give it away, reinstall the operating system, or download a program that overwrites and corrupts the data. Many of the programs are free. A perfect price for peace of mind.