You just never know what you’re going to get when buying wares off eBay. You could be purchasing a box of rocks or a used government hard drive that still has security polices, blueprints of facilities, and government employee’s social security numbers. You just never know, eh?
Similar data was recently found on drives that where scrutinized for sensitive data purchased by three universities. Of the 300 used disks purchased in this test, 34% had personal, commercial, and government info on them. One drive even had the test launch procedures of Lockheed Martin’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) ground to air missile defense system used to shoot down Scud missiles in Iraq. (pictured)
Some of these drives had a basic format performed, but come on, if a drive has government military secrets on it, a power drill seems like the appropriate tool to wipe the data. Not only that, the hard drive should probably not be sold on the used market being eBay, Craigslist, or a fleamarket. Let this be a lesson to us all. If you have, or had, data stored on a hard drive that big brother or a terrorist would find interesting, don’t sell your hard drive.