OLD MACHINE

ERASE ALL PERSONAL DATA

No matter who you are giving your old computer to, you need the peace of mind that none of your sensitive personal information can be accessed. Passwords, credit card information, bank information, social security numbers, and emails are only some of the sensitive personal information stored on your computer.

HOW DO I ERASE MY INFORMATION?

First, determine the use purpose for your machine, then delete all the files and the information associated with those activities. Start by deleting all the files in your “My Documents” folder and your “App Data” folder. Then, delete all user accounts on the computer. Keep in mind that these files may be stored in many different locations on your hard drive.

WILL DELETING FILES KEEP ME SAFE?

Maybe. We understand it is not a confident answer when it comes to data security and that is so because there are major issues with manual file deletion in this manner

• It is time-intensive and not guaranteed to remove all critical files. The filing structures in different operating systems make it difficult for a user to fully understand what and from where to delete the specific files. For instance, some programs keep cached, temporary, or hidden files that one wouldn’t look for or easily locate.

• Manual deletion of a file does not permanently erase data from hard drives. Once the files have been “emptied” from your recycling bin, they can still be recovered and read off from the drive sectors, through free and widely available software tools.

THEN WHAT SHOULD I DO?

USE CLARABYTE! With Clarabyte, the files are not just deleted, but the sections of the hard drive where they were stored are overwritten. This makes your data unrecoverable. It is the same method used by government and corporate entities throughout the world.