The Oregonian

A Gresham technology firm will donate its scrubbing software
for a computer-recycling drive in Tualatin

10/17/03
CATHERINE TREVISON

GRESHAM -- When it comes to personal information, the delete key isn't enough, say computer investigators at New Technologies Armor.

With a few keystrokes and a little bit of time, an investigator -- or a hacker -- can dig deep into a hard drive and retrieve numbers for credit cards and bank accounts, imprudent e-mails, and visits to the friskier parts of the World Wide Web.

When NTI founder Michael Anderson found out about a computer-recycling drive Oct. 25 in Clackamas County, part of him cheered, but part of him cringed.

He supports the charitable donation of computers, but not without limits. This is a man who keeps the hard drive for every computer he's ever had -- about 10 or 15 -- sealed in its own Ziploc bag.

For an identity thief, a computer-recycling drive could be a gold mine, Anderson said.

NTI announced Thursday that it will donate its hard drive-scrubbing software to Clackamas County and to the recycler conducting the event, Seattle-based Total Reclaim, to make sure the computers are donated safely.

Total Reclaim is a regional recycler that handles 1,000 monitors and about 300 to 400 hard drives a day, said Craig Lorch, one of the company's owners.

It already scrubs the hard drive of newer computers that will be reused through donations to charitable organizations. (Older computers are taken apart by hand and recycled for scrap, he said.) Staffers will evaluate the NTI program to see whether it works better, Lorch said.

In the years since investigators retrieved e-mails from Monica Lewinsky, people have become more aware that "deleting" information on a computer doesn't truly get rid of it. But that awareness may not translate into action.

Early this year, two students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published their survey of the dismal state of computer cleansing in the journal IEEE Security and Privacy. They bought 158 hard drives from eBay and other sources over two years, finding 5,000 credit card numbers, detailed personal and corporate financial records, medical records and pornography.

Some owners did try to erase information, but it often didn't work, the students reported. Some owners tried to use a Windows "format" command to banish the data, not knowing it's not the most effective, NTI officials said.

Using a format command is like shredding a library's card catalog, said Rich Radford of NTI. The normal way of finding books is gone, Radford said, but the books are still on the shelf.

In an open house Thursday at NTI in Gresham, Greg Evans, evidence discovery services manager, and Paul French, director of consulting services, used NTI software to dig into a drive. Their lists included the number of times the user had typed in a credit card or bank account number.

"Anyone who uses a computer -- if you use Quicken or Microsoft Money . . . all of that is still floating around in the hard drive," Evans said.

NTI doesn't sell tools such as its scrubber to the general public, Anderson said. Most clients are large companies concerned with security; the company also trains people from corporations, police, military services and other government agencies in computer forensics.

Typically, NTI is trying to recover information from computers. But making the scrubber available to the recyclers won't harm that cause, NTI officials said.

Once a computer has left the owner's hands, its value as evidence plummets, Anderson said. Also, many criminals already try to scrub their hard drives -- the people who don't are unlikely to be committing crimes, Radford said.

People wishing to recycle computers can take them to the county event from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 25 in the Church of the Resurrection parking lot, 21060 S.W. Stafford Road, Tualatin. The recyclers will take computers, monitors, printers, modems, hard drives and cables. They will not take manuals, foam packing, boxes, mice, disks or software. The fee is $10 a car with one monitor and $8 for each additional monitor.

The drive is sponsored by Clackamas County and the cities of Lake Oswego and West Linn. For more information, call 503-353-4458.

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