A company gives a batch of old computers to a recycler but neglects to delete the data stored on them. A few months later the hard drives—full of Social Security numbers, credit-card information, and corporate secrets—are for sale on EBay or a street corner in Ghana. It’s a corporate nightmare. And it’s an all-too-common scenario with e-waste.
Allowing sensitive information to leak out is embarrassing, of course, but it can also infuriate customers whose information is exposed and open the door to lawsuits and government fines. “There’s always headlines where a hospital has donated its computers and patient information is still on them,” says Robert Johnson, chief executive officer of the National Association for Information Destruction, a trade group that certifies specialists who erase data and shred paper documents. “It’s not as bad as it was five years ago, but we still have a long way to go.”
