A smashing solution to personal security

A recent study by consumer protection IT magazine Which? Computing recommends that anyone who really wishes to erase their personal details from an old computer hard drive needs to take a decidedly low-tech approach - with a hammer. As part of the study, the magazine bought eight computers on eBay, and successfully recovered a total of 22,000 files that the vendors believed had been irrevocably deleted.

Criminals have been known to source old computers from auction sites, skips and even rubbish dumps before using easily available software to restore files. While sophisticated software now exists that can erase files more permanently, the magazine sees total destruction as the easiest and most straightforward solution.

Some industry experts think this approach is more extreme than most consumers need to take. According to Rupert Goodwins, editor of technology news website ZDNet, "You can get a credit card number on the internet for about £10 from credit card thieves. So nobody's going to spend more than £10 trying to nick your credit card number off your hard disk."

Phillip Hoskins, a Partner in Andrew & Co LLP says, "Fortunately, people are becoming more aware of identity theft and taking simple steps to protect themselves. It only takes a few minutes to safeguard personal details and this is time well spent when considering the amount of effort needed to put right the disruption identity theft can cause."