The fateful sale of a hard disk

Not every success story has to be positive. Unfortunately, this story of Thomas was no exception:
In a quiet suburban neighborhood lived Thomas, a computer data scientist with extensive knowledge who had made a name for himself in the IT industry. But one day, he made a serious mistake that turned his world upside down. Thomas decided to sell his old computer on eBay to buy a more powerful model. He removed his hard drive and formatted it to erase his personal data. In his rush, however, he forgot that simply formatting it was insufficient to delete the data safely.

A savvy buyer named Alex discovered the offer on the auction platform. He quickly realized the potential to extract valuable information from the inadequately erased hard drive. So he bought it and set it to work with recovery software to make the supposedly deleted data visible again. After just a few seconds, he got lucky.

Alex successfully found sensitive information on the hard drive, such as credit card numbers, passwords, personal documents, and tens of thousands of photos of Thomas. Among them were erotic pictures of his two ex-girlfriends. He decided to use this information to blackmail Thomas and relieve him of a large sum of money.

Thomas received an e-mail from Alex telling him about the blackmail. Deeply frightened and panicked, he tried to fix his mistakes using special data-destruction programs. Thus, he purchased iShredder™ Windows from the Protectstar™ website and explained his situation. But it was already too late for Thomas, as his hard drive was already days in Alex's hands. Thomas realized that he should have been more responsible with his data. So he decided to use his experience to educate others about the importance of securely deleting data. He began giving talks and workshops at his company to raise awareness about the dangers of inadequately deleted data.

Fortunately, a criminal complaint for extortion and fraud stopped Alex from using Thomas' data. Whether Alex has a copy of the data could not be determined.
 

Thomas' story shows how important it is to securely and permanently delete personal data before selling or disposing of storage media such as hard drives, SSDs, smartphones, and tablets.
Using special data erasure tools like iShredder™, one can minimize the risk of personal information falling into the wrong hands and being used for criminal purposes. By being responsible for your data, you protect not only your privacy but also your security and the security of others.

Learn more: https://www.protectstar.com/en/products/ishredder