security: Second-hand hard discs found to hold recoverable sensitive data.

The article cites a study according to which financial and commercially sensitive data is routinely left on used hard discs, which are sold without being properly wiped. More than seven in 10 used but functional hard discs bought on eBay Inc. and examined for the study by Berlin, Germany-based hard disc utilities company O&O Software GmbH still had valuable and easily recoverable data on them. This year's figure of 71.5% represents a small improvement on a similar survey last year, when 88% of discs were found to contain data: but disc sizes have increased substantially this year. Researchers reconstructed more than 3.3 million files and found 50 e-mail mailboxes, complete with the previous users' e-mails. The results in 2004 were alarming. In 2005, the results show a small improvement. However, even when the percentage of recoverable data on the tested hard discs has fallen, the quality of recovered data has improved dramatically.