40% of Used Hard Drives Sold on eBay Contain Private Data

Posted 02/11/2009 at 12:19pm | by Andy Salisbury

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According to a study by New York computer forensics firm, Kessler International, 40 percent of the hard drives that are purchased in bulk orders on eBay contain personal, private and sensitive information. They’ve found everything from corporate financial data to surfing histories and even the downloads of a man with a foot fetish.

The study, which was conducted over six months, consisted of nearly 100 drives that ranged in size from 40GB to 300GB. “With size of the sample, I guess we were surprised with the percentage of disks that we found data on,” stated Michael Kessler, CEO of Kessler International. “We expected most of the drives to be wiped -- to find one or two disks with data. But 40 drives out of 100 is a lot.”

Of the data that they retrieved, 36 percent was personal data and confidential information (including financial information), 21 percent were photos, 13 percent were corporate documents, 11 percent browsing histories, 11 percent DNS server information, and 4 percent was miscellaneous data.

So, should you be looking to sell your machine on eBay let this be a warning to you! Be sure to format the drive completely, ensuring that you wipe out each little piece of data. Who knows where it might end up?