AMARILLO, TEXAS - Your driver's license number, your insurance information, and even your social security number could be on a hard drive in the back of a truck.Your personal information is stored in hard drives on copy machines at least ten years old...and it could very easily end up in the wrong hands.
With the simple push of a button, your personal information could be stored in a hard drive within a copy machine.
Brad Sanders, General Manager of Westgate Computers, says "they have hard drives in them and are capable of storing information in them."
We took a look inside some hard drives pulled from big copiers. We dodged a bullet, in that no information was found because the drives were wiped clean.
Still, sanders says most people are not aware of how many other copiers could be holding their information.
Sanders says, "most places don't know the data is even there. And when they load the scanner in a truck and it gets hauled off, that's a lot of data."
Tascosa Office Machines leases thousands of copiers to local businesses.
Owner J.P. King says, "we've got calls from the hospitals, the college has started to worry about it."
That is why since this problem came to light, King wipes the hard drive of each copier clean of personal information.
But he says there is only one foolproof plan.
King says, "take the hard drive out at the end of the life of the machine and smash it. Or I'll hand it to them and they can do whatever they want to."
http://www.newschannel10.com/G...story.asp?S=12524156