Linked: Warning after 75,000 ‘deleted’ files found on used USB drives
Well yeah, this is the most important message from the article, and the whole reason I’m sharing it:
“”Software is freely available that can permanently wipe USB drives, so if you are going to sell a device we would strongly recommend using that.””
Like many of us, you probably have a bunch of thumb drives laying around, not being used anymore. Maybe you could grab a whole bunch of them and make a few bucks selling them off, or giving them away. Understand how easy it is to recover files from a thumb drive when you only “delete” them and then turn that over. It’s not enough. You want to find software that will actually overwrite the drive, what we commonly refer to as “zeroing out”.
Personally, I haven’t done this in a while, but there are plenty of free tools available to do that, or you can also do a full format of the drive. Whatever you choose, just don’t throw them away, or give them away until you have. You never know where it’ll end up and what people will find on them.
https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-scotland-tayside-central-54779322
