Call Today 619-295-5474

shredding services san diego

TOTAL SECURE SHREDDING

San Diego's Top-Rated Residential & Small Business Paper Shredding Company


7377 Convoy Ct,

San Diego, CA 92111


Blog Layout

Copier Hard Drive Shredding

Hey Folks,

Mike here…

It’s amazing how much information that is held on old hard drives… Information you’ve long forgotten the existence and importance of.


Just a few weeks ago I resurrected an old PC that was first used in my home and then somewhere along the line migrated itself to the office.


During the time at the office, it had been kicked, shuffled, tipped over, and generally neglected.

But I had a need for another computer around the shop, and when faced with the cost of a new computer in relation for the need I had, I thought I might give the old computer a try.

So I hooked up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and fired it up.

To my surprise, it started up perfectly fine and loaded up windows without a single problem.

But besides my amazement that the computer loaded up, I was even more surprised atall the old information that was still on the hard drive. 


I completely forgot that this was the computer that I was using when I started Total Secure Shredding.

It had QuickBooks Files, old Quicken files (personal financial information), plenty of Word and Excel files, plus multiple email programs that were not password protected and which had a ton of old emails on them.

The moral is that these “Old” computers do have some very substantial information on them than may be putting your business or family at risk of Identity Theft.


And, as you may have seen in recent days, this also goes for just about every copier that has been built since 2002.

In April, CBS News broke the story that many copiers sent out for resale have not had their hard drives sanitized or replaced.


Of the four copiers that were picked at random to meet certain price and volume specifications, every last one of them had hard drives jammed full of confidential information. Adding insult to injury, two of them came from two different Buffalo NY police departments with one still having documents on the glass. One of the other was from a New York Construction company and contained design plans while the other was from a New York insurance company.


All that was needed to get documents of the copier from the insurance company was to hit “PRINT”. The result was “300 pages of individual medical records.” Current HIPAA regulations mandate that the information that was found (Drug Prescriptions, Blood Test Results, & Cancer Diagnosis)must be properly destroyed prior to disposal.

New Paragraph

Ultimate Guide to Shredding
By Total Secure Shredding 02 Feb, 2023
Worried about your private information getting into the wrong hands? Check out this guide on how to shred your items and keep your identity safe.
secure shredding
By Total Secure Shredding 27 Aug, 2015
Perhaps the number one reason why most companies choose to shred unwanted documents is to enhance and maintain security. What you may not know is that document shredding isn’t just a great way to improve...
data breach
By Total Secure Shredding 20 Aug, 2015
A look at the latest and most significant hacker-related data breaches; determined by the amount of classified information that ended up in the wrong hands. 5,377 – Number of data breaches from 2005 to June.
Share by: