Why are people so comfortable selling their old MacBook Pros?

[42streetsdown]

Personally, i wouldnt be surprised. Buy a macbook for a few hundred dollers to steal a few thousand from their identity. Seems worth wile for a criminal.

but passwords in the keychain are encrypted in OS X, so unless everybody keeps all of their bank passwords and SSN and such in a text document on their desktop they're fine.

 

[snaky69]

I wonder how much that crusher costs....doesnt look that much different than a log splitter at home depot. Too bad I dont have one of those.

Personally, i go the cheap route. Take some caveman techniques to it and call it a day.

You know, simply zero-ing out the drive using an external enclosure and your shiny new mac would effectively destroy all the data on it, if you are insecure, do a 7-pass erase.

 

[Nuckinfuts]

but passwords in the keychain are encrypted in OS X, so unless everybody keeps all of their bank passwords and SSN and such in a text document on their desktop they're fine.

Encryption can be broken

 

[HellDiverUK]

If your data is private enough to be a concern, then you'll keep your drive, plain and simple.

At work I have a drawer full of old drives that we need to keep, because we can't throw them out and it's too much work/time to blank them properly. It's cheaper to buy a new PC and just keep the drive from the old one safe.

 

[s.hasan546]

on my personal computer i could care less. My company harddrives are always kept as backups in cheap enclosures. Also a lot of our files are on business online storage sites so they are only accessed through online and never saved to harddrives.

 

[42streetsdown]

Bank information is a big thing, and one zero-out pass is the equivalent of a full reformat and is not adequate. And would you really want to risk your personal information on the assumption that you can't imagine people stealing data off of used hard drives?

Reformatting usually only changes the file system, it doesn't necessarily zero the drive. Zeroing the drive is an adequate method of data retrieval prevention

Encryption can be broken

not if the drive has also been zeroed out.

 

[maflynn]

Encryption can be broken

Yes it can but you have to look at your risks. Someone getting a hard drive in all likelihood will not have the skills and/or desire to try to unencrypt OSX's keychain. There's a point where you really don't need to take such extreme steps.

I mean, a meteor could fall on my house but should I spend all sorts of money to guard against that?

A 7 pass zeroed out is more then sufficient to project you. We're not talking about hacker group lulzsec or anonymous scrounging around in dumps looking for hard drives to unencrypt.

 

[Nuckinfuts]

Reformatting usually only changes the file system, it doesn't necessarily zero the drive. Zeroing the drive is an adequate method of data retrieval prevention

not if the drive has also been zeroed out.

There is such thing as "secure" reformatting where instead of marking every block as simply "overwrite", it does a single pass zero-out, this was the difference between "Reformat NTFS" and "Reformat NTFS (quick)" in Windows XP and earlier.

And if the data is recoverable, the encryption on said data can still be broken.

Yes it can but you have to look at your risks. Someone getting a hard drive in all likelihood will not have the skills and/or desire to try to unencrypt OSX's keychain. There's a point where you really don't need to take such extreme steps.

I mean, a meteor could fall on my house but should I spend all sorts of money to guard against that?

A 7 pass zeroed out is more then sufficient to project you. We're not talking about hacker group lulzsec or anonymous scrounging around in dumps looking for hard drives to unencrypt.

I'm not saying 7-pass isn't good enough, 35-pass was an extreme example. I'm arguing against SINGLE pass zeroing out. And yes, the chances are remote that whoever owns your hard drive next will go digging around in it for deleted files but why take the risk? 7-pass will take a couple hours but could potentially save you thousands of dollars in damages from bank fraud or identity theft and what does it costs you? a couple hours.

 

[surfologist87]

Haha, I remember when I disposed of a garbage old Dell desktop PC I had. I just smashed the hard drive as many times as I could, threw it against rocks and just to be sure burnt it with a lighter 😀

hahha ive done that a couple times to old computers. now i just do one of those 35 pass zero fills or whatever. haha. all of the terrible things on my computer gone forever! lol

 

[fibrizo]

Here's my ultimate technique... since I sell my macbook pro every year and get a new one.

Step 1. Purchase a 500gb 7200 rpm drive.
Step 2. Purchase macbook pro.
Step 3. Take macbook pro out from box and remove the bottom panel.
Step 4. Remove the stock apple HD and install my HD
Step 5. Install OSX and programs via the included restore disks
Step 6. Enjoy for 1 year.

Then when I'm ready to sell, I open it up and take out my HD and replace the unused apple stock (with stock install still on it) and just move my HD to the new maching while taking out the stock drive before I even boot it once.

This way I do no formatting... no 8000 pass 0 writes etc etc, and I'm almost absolutely certain that my personal information will not be recovered from a HD I've never booted. 🙂

 

[Nuckinfuts]

Here's my ultimate technique... since I sell my macbook pro every year and get a new one.

Step 1. Purchase a 500gb 7200 rpm drive.
Step 2. Purchase macbook pro.
Step 3. Take macbook pro out from box and remove the bottom panel.
Step 4. Remove the stock apple HD and install my HD
Step 5. Install OSX and programs via the included restore disks
Step 6. Enjoy for 1 year.

Then when I'm ready to sell, I open it up and take out my HD and replace the unused apple stock (with stock install still on it) and just move my HD to the new maching while taking out the stock drive before I even boot it once.

This way I do no formatting... no 8000 pass 0 writes etc etc, and I'm almost absolutely certain that my personal information will not be recovered from a HD I've never booted. 🙂

I'd love to see the frustration on someone's face trying to recover your personal data off that stock drive lol 🙄

 

[Pentad]

You know, I teach classes on security and I have colleagues who are paranoid like the OP and want to know how to DoD their drives. Yet, they are using Google, GMail, Twitter, FaceBook, Chrome, etc...without the slightest concern for the personal information they are gladly posting or actively allowing others to datamine.

I chuckle every time I get asked about 'wiping their drive for security'.


-P

 

[Nuckinfuts]

You know, I teach classes on security and I have colleagues who are paranoid like the OP and want to know how to DoD their drives. Yet, they are using Google, GMail, Twitter, FaceBook, Chrome, etc...without the slightest concern for the personal information they are gladly posting or actively allowing others to datamine.

I chuckle every time I get asked about 'wiping their drive for security'.


-P

Google may know what porn I frequent, but I don't keep my bank transactions on any Google service.