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Old data: Don't Ask, Don't tell?

Chuck(G) said:
I remember picking up a system and getting the very extensive records of the local dental association, including all sorts of personal information. I wiped the drive--I had no business having that information. I suspect that they would have wiped the drive themselves, but this was a machine that needed a special floppy to boot.
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I've found all sorts of computers in second hand stores and the junk yard with stuff like this on them.

My most recent find was a Dell latitude D610 from the junk yard. It was in decent condition and most of the D600/610s I find are in their normal Windows XP configuration usually with the previous user's files on them, well not this one, it was very special. I was surprised when it started booting Windows Server 2003, even more surprised when the administrator password was blank and stunned when I saw what was on the desktop.

It had several MS Excel documents filled with thousands of SSNs, the names associated with them, their home addresses and their criminal record history. It was also running a MSSQL server with what looked like a partially developed application for parsing said information in the excel spreadsheets. According to the system log, the last time it had been used was sometime in 2008. It's a miracle that in those 8 years of limbo that it didn't make its way into the hands of identity thieves, they could have ruined the lives of all of those people.

Needless to say, I did the same thing as luckybob, smashed the drive (after recovering the windows 2k3 and MS office keys of course.)
 
Unknown_K said:
What, nobody found nude pictures yet?
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I did, once. I about shat myself, at first, because I had no way of telling (or, more importantly, proving) how old the chicks were. Some digging, however, revealed that the chap subscribed to a service for wannabe glamor photographers. They would send him models, he'd do a photo-shoot and they'd print it up as a one-off or short run magazine for him. The girls were all over 18 and all of the necessary paperwork was on file.

I still thoroughly wiped the fscker, though.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Needless to say, I did the same thing as luckybob, smashed the drive (after recovering the windows 2k3 and MS office keys of course.)
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What good are the keys (which are not registered to you and more then likely attached to another machine) going to be?
 
Unknown_K said:
What good are the keys (which are not registered to you and more then likely attached to another machine) going to be?
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If I purchase the machine and it has a license for xyz corp software on it, I consider it to be mine. Just like when an OEM sells you a computer with licensed software on it, those licenses are yours, even if it comes with no reinstall media or printed keys.

The thing about old software and operating systems is that the boxes and printed keys are often trashed with the system, just rarely accompanied with it. I've recovered hundreds of software keys for re-installation and I very rarely encounter the key actually being used again. In those cases, I just remove the license key from my list of software.
 
Unknown_K said:
What, nobody found nude pictures yet?
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Well with that comment you open the question of, if you start looking and come across one 'nude pictures' of underage person, then you have a dilemma.

Do you make a moral judgement that the pic is one innocent family pic, taken by the parent and just delete it ?

or do you look to see if there are more that could be 'sinister' and represent someone creating or collecting child porn ?

Then if the machine has a very rare OS and difficult to get master disks for, ie a Sirius or Victor 9000, do you report the find to law enforcement or what ?

If you copy the pics and owner traceable data to another modern media and hand that to law enforcement are you guilty of anything ?

A lawyer that may come to represent the original machine owner, could then argue that you, not their client added the 'child porn' to a media containing just their clients personal contact data, and you end up being the one getting charged for the 'child porn'

Most likely the Child Protection unit of your local law enforcement would want to see the original machine, and if its a super rare machine, that could mean you loose it.

In my view I gladly surrender a found or bought machine if it save a child or children from further harm !
 
luckybob said:
In all my experiences, I just wipe the drive if I am sure no hardware drivers (or similar) would be needed. I have seen so many SS# and relevant info, its no longer funny, However, I once got a Pentium 3 era machine. There was a word file on the desktop labeled "to my family". Not thinking twice, I opened it. It was a suicide note.

There were some names of people and 5 minutes on google revealed the person did kill themselves several years prior. I was really torn. Do I open the can of worms, and try to give this info to family members? Or do I wipe the drive and forget the whole thing. It really was quite the dilemma for me. I don't believe there was a 100% right answer in this case. There is something to be said for letting a sleeping dog lie, and not risking the chance to start a shitshow for the survivors. Also, how would the family feel about a stranger reading this? Granted I got the machine from a thrift store, but still, the invasion of privacy was there. However, what if the family had no idea the letter existed, and it would be helpful to them?

In the end. I pulled the hard drive and physically destroyed the drive.
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This was a dilemma. However I just read this post to my other half and her comment came down to it really hinged on the actual content of that 'suicide' note.

If the note was a very basic 'I cannot cope and absolutely no reasons', then it probably best to as you say 'let sleeping dogs lie' and just trash the drive,

However if the note has any real 'content to it', then our suggestion is

1. ring a 'lifeline' or 'suicide' prevention phone service and get some suggestions from them. They may be able take on the interfacing of the note you have to get it to the deceased family.
or
2. talk to some councilling support group for advice.

In many cases, if the family of the person leaving the note, had no idea of its existence, it could give closure.

However equally it could open a huge can of worms, like maybe the persons death may have been listed as 'death by unknown reasons or like" and the family got a insurance payout; that would NOT have occured if the 'cause of death' had been listed as 'suicide'. Then in that case it makes them accessory after the fact in Insurance fraud.

But I think the moral here is in your own mind how would you feel if you were the family member left wondering and grieving.

If you have no family to give you a 'reference', then use the vision of MH370 relatives still morning and waiting for closure.
 
Chuck(G) said:
It depends on what you'd call a "picture'. For example, I've found several "nudes" employing printer character art from the 1970s. Do they count? You do need a printer capable of rendering FORTRAN first-character print control, however.
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Ha! I remember back in 1974/5 when I was going to a Navy school on the Varian 620i, the first two things that came off the ITT teletype/printer were a Snoopy doing a happy dance, and a top half nudie of Marilyn Monroe, all in ASCII characters. You had to back-off 8 or 10 feet for the things to make sense.
 
Some of the printer art that I have is really large--multiple sheets of 132 column stuff.

Too bad nobody's interested in that sort of thing any more.
 
Get this, I recent scored about 20 68k and gen1 ppc mac machines. Most have removed hard drives. I picked up two Quadra 630's. Fired each one up to see if they work, etc. Turns out they used to belong to Lockheed and/or Martin Marietta, and were used by the HR department. I have no use for office program serial numbers, but there was a nice Homer Simpson desktop app I saved.

How do I know this was used by the HR department? Why the drives were crammed with excel files containing employee address, personal info, SS# of course!

YEA... Drives are being DOD wiped as I type this. If you don't know, the Quadra 630 is a PITA to work on. At least removing the HDD. Not how I wanted to spend my time to be honest, but if I forgot, and sold the drive on ebay... *sigh*
 
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