Staples Caught Selling PCs with Old Customer Data

[EmptyTimCup]

Staples Caught Selling PCs with Old Customer Data

Stop! Before reading any further, grab yourself a pair of fuzzy mittens or a helmet with a faceguard. The reason? A Canadian audit of systems resold by Staples and performed by the office of Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart reveals that there's plenty of facepalming to go around. First there's the finding that Staples allegedly ran afoul of Canadian privacy law by not fully wiping customer data from notebooks and storage devices before reselling them. A facepalm is also in order for customers who returned said items without first wiping the data themselves.

According to CBC News, the audit discovered banking information, tax records, social security numbers, and academic transcripts on 54 of 149 tested data storage devices that were to be resold by Staples.

"The position of our office is that if Staples is unable to remove all customer data from a particular manufacturer's device, it is unacceptable to resell that device," said a summary of the findings.

 

[LordStanley]

I wonder why they didnt find any music or naked photos?

 

[vraiblonde]

That must be a pretty lenient return policy if the user had it long enough to get all that on it before they decided they didn't want it anymore.

 

[GWguy]

It would be an interesting social experiment to recover the drives from all the PCs put into the electronic recycle at the transfer station, and see how many either wiped or removed the drives before trashing the hardware.

I'll bet the percentage would be fairly high, as most aren't even aware they should do this.

 

[glhs837]

I have all my old hard drives One day soon I will have a nailgun party with them Once I get a power supply to power them up

 

[LordStanley]

To be honest, it shouldn’t be staples responsibility to delete the customer’s data... Put the burden on the customer! If they don’t care about their PII, why should a business?

stupid people should be held accountable!

 

[EmptyTimCup]

I have all my old hard drives One day soon I will have a nailgun party with them Once I get a power supply to power them up

Range Targets .....

 

[Mongo53]

I have all my old hard drives One day soon I will have a nailgun party with them Once I get a power supply to power them up

Trying to find something creative to do with them.

To be honest, it shouldn’t be staples responsibility to delete the customer’s data... Put the burden on the customer! If they don’t care about their PII, why should a business?

stupid people should be held accountable!

Some people just don't think before they do things. You can buy used furniture and find all sorts of records in them, that the original owner should have removed. BUT, the burden is on the owner of the info.

But, sadly, in our society today, stupid people are the last to be held accountable, those with the deepest pockets that you can pin the slightest responsibility on, are always held accountable.

So, whether its fair or NOT to say, Staples is pretty darn stupid, because they should know they would be decimated in court if someone was harmed because of computer they handled and resold. (Although I'd love to hear a Judge say, its your own damn fault, get out of my court room and stop sucking up my air!)

Range Targets .....

That is the fate of our XBOX360 that suffered the RROD after it was out of warranty. (And yes, we did all the tricks and limped it along for another 18mo before it finally died). We will put it on youtube when we do it.