Discarding old computer? Smash it

LONDON: If you're planning on getting rid of an old computer, make sure you remove the hard drive first and smash it up with a hammer, a British consumer group advised yesterday.

Which? Computing magazine said the only way to make sure fraudsters could not steal personal details from an old computer's hard drive was to utterly destroy it, as simply deleting files or wiping the drive was not sufficient.

The magazine said it had bought eight second-hand drives from Internet auction site eBay and recovered 22,000 "deleted" files, including some information that could be confidential.