Don't sell your corporate secrets on eBay

Every couple of years, a research team makes the headlines after buying discarded hard drives, laptops or desktop PCs to see what kind of data they can salvage. In 2003, research was conducted by two graduate students - Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat - who purchased just over 150 second-hand hard drives, approximately one third of which still contained confidential information.  Two years later, it was a German team which discovered that seven out of every ten used hard drives bought on eBay contained readable data.

The most recent example occurred in May 2009 when an English-led team restored an eBay-purchased hard drive and revealed the launch procedures for a US air missile defence system. The drive also contained defence-related policy documents, facility blueprints and sensitive contractor employee data. Other hard drives purchased by the team contained medical records, bank account details, confidential business plans and corporate financial data.