Copy Machines, AKA Data Goldmines

Scary as hell....

Yup, just saw that on our local news for Buffalo.....it is scary.

I saw that too-- told my neice about it, a lot of paperwork in her business.

Just remember the warning when you take your tax return to the nearest copy center, or post office, or into work or wherever. Now realize the photocopy service copy guy has all the tools to swap out the hard drive in a flash. The better trained techs will even know how to download the hard drive diagnostic information to their equipment. Scared yet? How about the all in one units. Computer printer, FAX and scanner. The very high end units have hard drives. How long will it be before someone hacks the operating system and downloads the hard drive contents via a incoming FAX telephone call. I'm not saying this has been done, but it might be possible. Old fashioned carbon paper anyone? Don't forget to burn the carbon paper, someone might pick it out of the trash.

Worried? Buy your own low end photocopier, they don't have hard drives. They have volatile semiconductor memory. Content is lost when you turn the power off.

Wonder how many copies of people's asses they've seen?

Very scary!!!

Yanche wrote:Worried? Buy your own low end photocopier, they don't have hard drives. They have volatile semiconductor memory. Content is lost when you turn the power off.

Yanche, I think you hit it in the beginning statement. It is generally not your personal computer or copier that will do the bad guys much good it would be the ones from large companies or government offices that have the most potential, the copiers that are out of our control. Maybe the best deterrent to identity theft is to max out any and all credit cards, own nothing, and file bankruptcy, or better yet owe the IRS a lot of money and be on the run from them. Now who would want to be you?

It’s all scary stuff but I can’t let it keep me up at night.