Friday, September 17, 2010

Recycling a Laptop - Are There Any Security Issues?




If you are looking to recycle a laptop for cash you may be wondering if there are any security-issues involved in this.
The main security worry that people have is with regards to the personal data that is stored on their laptop.
Many people might not know how to erase the data from the laptop hard-drive. Other may not be completely confident that trying to erasing themselves will be definitely erase all the data stored on there.
If your laptop is refurbished and then sold on to someone else will they be able to view any of the personal data you had stored on there? The short answer to this question is no.
All personal data will be erased by the refurbishment company. If you are giving your laptop to a recycling company, such as Mirror Go Green, they have the appropriate software to ensure all this data is cleared. They use the internationally recognised Blancco software on every laptop they receive.
How does Blancco software work?
As you can guess from the name Blancco it basically "blanks" the computer memory.
The computer memory is laid out in different chunks on the hard drive. The software firstly unprotects all these chunks. This enables all the information you have stored to be wiped from each chunk.
These chunks are then filled with blank information. This process is repeated until each chunk of memory is full of blank information.
If someone attempted to recover any information the only thing recovered would be the blank information that was replaced by the blancco software.
So if you were in any way worried about the security of recycling a laptop then you have 100% percent peace of mind.
For more information on recycling a laptop please visit:

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