ST, Aug 19, 2006
Second-hand PCs a fraud data-mine
Nigerian criminals find valuable data on hard disks of old PCs from
Britain
LONDON - FRAUDSTERS in Nigeria have managed to retrieve Internet
banking details stored on recycled PCs sent from Britain to Africa,
putting the privacy and pockets of thousands of Britons at
risk.
The information, which is found on the PC's hard disk, is then sold
in West Africa for less than £20 (S$60), reported the
BBC's Real Story.
Deleting files from a PC is not enough, warned anti-fraud experts,
who said documents on a hard disk are easy to access if the drive
is not wiped by special programmes before it is given away.
According to the BBC, nearly every PC market in Nigeria's
commercial capital of Lagos is rife with second-hand computers from
all over the developed world.
'Once you let your computer go away, your so-called personal
computer is no longer personal, it becomes very public,' said
environmental campaigner Jim Puckett.
Many of the PCs found on sale in Lagos had come from British
council recycling points.
To show the ease of tracking data on a hard disk, the BBC asked a
computer forensic expert to trace the original owners of 17 hard
drives bought from Nigeria for £15 each.
The data found on the drives included bank account numbers,
passwords and e-mails - some of which led to a Mr Ted Roberts of
Essex, who said he had dropped his PC off at a local council
recycling point.
'I am absolutely gob- smacked that information has come off a
computer in Nigeria,' he said when told that his hard drive had
made readily available details relating to his family, car and even
his bank account.
Although Britons are still being urged to give away their old PCs,
they have been told to wipe the hard drive - not just to remove
bank details but also other personal information such as home
addresses, said the BBC.
The process overwrites what is already contained on the drive and
is more effective than simply deleting files, said anti-fraud
expert Owen Roberts. Alternatively, people should remove their hard
drives before giving away their computers.
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