Public Service: Be Wary Of Digital Photocopiers
May 14, 2010 Political
If you take your personal documents to work or use a business that provides copying services then you are at risk for identity theft. Additionally, businesses are at risk of inadvertently disclosing a great deal of personally identifying information.
A CBS report shows that used copiers are resold and that they contain hard drives with images of documents that have been copied or scanned. The report shows how copiers from police departments contained information on suspects who were involved in drug and sex crimes. The report also shows how thousands of documents from a health care company were retrieved and those documents included medical information including test results, diagnoses, and social security numbers.
All of the information could easily be used by those engaged in identity theft and the report indicates that some of the copiers were bought by entities outside our country.
Technology exists to erase images from hard drives after a copy or scan is made. If you own a business you should insist on this for your machines.
If you are copying personal stuff you should insist on copiers that have the technology (I have used them and they indicate that the image is being erased).
Just a public service announcement from the Big Dog.
Now, if I can just figure out how to take care of the Nigerian scammers…
Sources:
CBS
Maniac World
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: cbs, digital photocopiers, hard drive, identity theft, images