Keeping Your Personal Data Safe

In the age of high tech gadgets such as laptops, desktops, smart phones and USB thumb drives, your personal data could be up for grabs. Think about where you have your data stored and who can access it. Many times information is found in the old hardware that is either thrown away or sold as second hand equipment. We can't always be control who gets our data, but we can be vigilant about safeguarding it.

Who Can Get Your Personal Data
As was mentioned previously, personal data can be found in many places. As pricing for new computers and other electronics go lower, most consumers are looking to dispose of the old to make room for the new. The market for second hand hard drives is huge and many of these storage devices have not been wiped out. A scouring of eBay or other auction sites gives many people the opportunity of acquiring these second hand storage devices easily.

How to Wipe Your Personal Data
The unfortunate news is that there is really no way to completely remove all your personal data from most electronic gadgets. Deleting files and reformatting your hard drive only removes the information markers it needs to retrieve your personal data. Your personal data will still exist on the hard drive. The best you can do is scramble the data on your hard drive so that it cannot be read. That means using a utility that overwrites all the sectors on your hard drive with random binary numbers.

If your looking to wipe out information on a removable storage device such as an SD card, plug it into your computer and use the same utility to scramble the information.

Those who own the Apple iPhone and iPod can clear all their data before passing on them on to someone else. Go into the settings menu and choose General, Reset, Erase All Content, and Settings. This should clear all your data from the Apple device.

The Ultimate Guarantee of Your Personal Data
When it comes right down to it, the only way to make sure that your personal data is safe and secure, is to destroy that device. If this becomes your choice of protecting your personal data, make sure that you do a complete job. There are companies that specialize in data retrieval from storage devices after fires, floods and other natural disasters. Make sure that you have completely destroyed that device.