Identity Theft, Part 3

I haven't heard too much about identity theft here in the poor, meth driven NW. But the subject came to mind once again, as I received a "free" computer via "Craig's List".

The NW makes a humongous deal about being "Green" and recycling, so the thought of personal financial information left on those donated or trashed Hard Drives, never came to mind before. I have since remembered a HP 386 I bought many years ago, at a pawn shop, which contained among other things, "Quick Books" with the previous owners account info, etc. Being honest, I deleted all that crap.

Now for my present PC, the nice lady who gave donated it to me was concerned about not erasing "all data", so I simply removed her hard drive, returned it, and installed my old 80 Gig drive with all my software. I was dismayed to find out it had been erased. Oh well, I have downloaded all kinds of new software, etc. and will have to start over without my only copies of family photos & genealogy information. There may be some kind of program that can bring my data back, or anyone's info?

I have a simple solution, don't load all that info on your PC, laptop, etc. in the first place. I can't think of any reason to have credit card numbers, social security number and other confidential information saved to my computer!