] In fact, only 10 percent of the drives I purchased had
] been properly sanitized.
]
] Much of the data we found was truly shocking. One of the
] drives once lived in an ATM. It contained a year's worth
] of financial transactionsrom - including account numbers and
] withdrawal amounts from a organization that had a legal
] requirement to not divulge such information. Two other drives
] contained more than 5,000 credit card numbersit looked as if
] one had been inside a cash register. Another had e-mail and
] personal financial records of a 45-year-old fellow in Georgia.
] The man is divorced, paying child support and dating a woman
] he met in Savannah. And, oh yeah, he's really into pornography. This is another yet another problem caused by technology becoming more and more of a black box. People don't understand how a technology works, thus people don't understand how it exposes them, and people get screwed. [rant]
I fairly sure this lack of knowledge is a bad thing, and I don't know how to fix it. It even effects techno-junkies, like me. I like understanding technology. However there are some things I really don't care about, such as my car. I just want it to run. I understand how engines work, catalytic converters, etc, but beyond an oil change, fixing a flat, or rotating my tires, I'm sunk. So basically I'm to cars like Joe Sixpack is to Computers. I just want it to work. Of course the difference is my car doesn't have any personal information in it. Or does it? I can think of at least one car of the top of my head that has a hash of the owners fingerprint and voiceprint. Granted its just a hash, but still. And I think this is a problem thats only going to get worse: How do you explain to people enough about technology to protect themselves? Especially when they don't want to learn they just want it to work. My dad is a perfect example. The man has virus software over 60 months old. Adaware found 45+ *registry* entries of spyware. Viruses, crashes, everything. And everytime time something happens I try to explain to him what I'm doing so he can learn. (ie Explaining boot order so he knows to remove a floppy disk when getting an "invalid system disk" error, instead of calling me at 5:30am). Only dad couldn't give two shits. He doesn't remember what I've said. He wants his computer working again. Its not that dad is losing his mind, its just not important to him. The computer is an appliance, and I stop being the son and start being the Maytag man. The irony of this is mature folks should get this. My dad was someone who spend time babying a car, changes fluids, tuning the engine when he was young. He should get that a computer is not an appliance, but a finely tuned and powerful piece of equipment. That he needs to take the responsibilty to learn about the computer if he wants to the utilize the power of the machine. Only this is counter to the current trend. Instead we have $300 dollar computers. If it's broken, throw it away and buy a new one. Disposable Culture! Computers are now simply tools that the everyman can use. Don't get me wrong, thats good. But because of that people don't view the time it takes to learn about the computer as worth the effort. So naturally they think nothing about how to protect the computer they just used to fill out their taxes. Why should they? They never had to think about protecting the pens and other tools they used in the past to fill out a 1040. So instead people learn about protecting their computer from the news. "Hackers strike again! ID-theft ring busted!" And we wonder why the world is ok with things like Carnivore. We wonder why the DMCA isn't a concern. They don't care about DVD Region codes, rights for strong crypto, Library Internet filtering, CAPPS II, etc. Because those are things those damn kids in black t-shirts care about. They don't even understand why understanding should be important. The world doesn't understand, and I'm beginning to think that no amount of explaining can teach them. Because They just want it to work. Like I want my car to work.
[/rant] Hard-Disk Risk + RANT | 
