Computer Disposal - Protect Yourself from Identity Fraud

A list of unknown and expensive transactions on a credit card bill could be the first indication that you might have that your identity has been stolen.

Criminals have devised sophisticated ways of extracting personal information from electrical and computer waste by hacking into discarded computer hard drives before they have been recycled and disposed of safely.

Secure Computer Disposal

However, Midex is offering a secure way to dispose of sensitive information — by shredding hardware into inch square pieces.

Midex handles a massive range of everyday electrical equipment to retrieve and recycle raw materials such as plastic, steel, copper and gold from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

Business for the company has grown ever since a 2007 European Union ruling — the WEEE Directive — that requires the disposal and recycling of computer and electrical waste in an environmentally responsible manner.

Midex general manager Chris Spooner said there was an enormous risk to everyday people of having their identity ripped off.

"It is now at the critical stage," he explained.

"There are people who can gain access to redundant computer hardware and retrieve all the personal details that are recorded on it.

"If you enter you bank or credit card details into a computer, it will record it somewhere, and therefore that information can be looked at and exploited.

"A lot of organisations simply do not understand how difficult it is to wipe a hard drive completely.

"Most skilled professionals could recapture data from a hard drive in a matter of hours."

Details of 25 million child benefit records, which included millions of bank account numbers, were lost last November when two discs containing the information got lost via an internal courier.

Mr Spooner offers a guarantee that personal information contained on laptops, hard drives, servers, till systems and CD drives can all be destroyed by Midex's batch of crushing and shredding machines. "There is no way that any data can be extracted from the inch square pieces that we crush and shred the material into," he explained.

"It is a lot easier for company and private computers to be dealt with in this way, as there is no risk that the information can be accessed.

"Some firms pick up the I.T. equipment before passing it to another company which might then give it to another to be destroyed, but the fact is that you are only as strong as your weakest link."

Mr Spooner said leaving old computer equipment at local authority computer disposal sites was almost asking for the equipment to be taken apart and searched for personal details.

"There are a range of options for secure computer disposal," Mr Spooner added. "What is clearly no longer an option is leaving data on a site as public or insecure as a civic amenity site."

Weee Recycling in accordance with the Weee Directive

Midex, in its 16th year, leases lockable metal roll cages that allow WEEE to be transported securely from source to its Holder Road warehouse, ensuring that sensitive data is not compromised.

"We take responsibility from the moment that we collect the computer equipment," Mr Spooner said. "It is then taken securely to our warehouse where it is shredded."

Midex are computer equipment recycling experts, and are licensed by the Environment Agency and charges businesses to dispose of equipment by weight, handles around 148 tons of material a month — and the equivalent of 5,000 computers and recycled and disposed of in accordance with the Weee Directive.

Electrical waste is broken down, stripped and then thrown down chutes to be cut into various sizes and then sold on to the automotive industry to use for vehicle components or for smelting into the original metals.

The company will process and recycle hazardous cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors free of charge from next month in order to further help a national drive to reduce the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment sent to landfill.