T
tfodom
Recently I had a hard drive crash on my laptop during the warranty
period. IBM (Lenovo, I would guess) sent me a new hard drive, which I
installed and restored.
Now IBM wants the old drive back. I told them I would damage it so they
couldn't read the data. This is unacceptable to them. It must be sent
back no more damaged than it was at the time of the crash. The
representative said they often recyle them.
While my data was backed up, a lot of the data on the drive they want
returned is probably recoverable.
This raises serious identity theft issues in my mind, despite their
assurances that my data won't be used.
This may be industry practice--I don't know. If so, there is a lot of
data being sent back to computer manufacturers on damaged hard drives.
This presents an untapped (or maybe being used now) source for data and
identity theft.
IBM suggested I could send the hard drive to a data recovery company,
but 1. this solution is very expensive and 2. I'm not sure how to
verify that the data has been effectively erased so it is not
recoverable by IBM.
Shouldn't there be so kind of industry restriction in place to prevent
this ? Otherwise the warranty is a sham, unless you agree to send the
hard drive back--which in many cases may contain sensitive data.
This may be an industry wide issue.
period. IBM (Lenovo, I would guess) sent me a new hard drive, which I
installed and restored.
Now IBM wants the old drive back. I told them I would damage it so they
couldn't read the data. This is unacceptable to them. It must be sent
back no more damaged than it was at the time of the crash. The
representative said they often recyle them.
While my data was backed up, a lot of the data on the drive they want
returned is probably recoverable.
This raises serious identity theft issues in my mind, despite their
assurances that my data won't be used.
This may be industry practice--I don't know. If so, there is a lot of
data being sent back to computer manufacturers on damaged hard drives.
This presents an untapped (or maybe being used now) source for data and
identity theft.
IBM suggested I could send the hard drive to a data recovery company,
but 1. this solution is very expensive and 2. I'm not sure how to
verify that the data has been effectively erased so it is not
recoverable by IBM.
Shouldn't there be so kind of industry restriction in place to prevent
this ? Otherwise the warranty is a sham, unless you agree to send the
hard drive back--which in many cases may contain sensitive data.
This may be an industry wide issue.