[Sosfbay-news] Privacy Issue: Newer Copiers Remember Who Copied What!!!

[JamBoi]

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/22352

Copier + Hard Drive: A Dangerous Combination

Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:04PM EDT

It sounds like a slam dunk: Put a hard drive into a standard
photocopier, so you can have a digital version of anything you run
through the machine. That way, if the original is ever lost, you can
always run back to the backup. (I hadn't realized this, but copiers
have been including hard drives for five years now.)

But now people are finally waking up to the wrinkle in this plan, which
should have been obvious: What do people use copiers for, anyway? Yes,
for company flyers and employee manuals, but also for tax returns,
insurance cards, photo IDs, and Social Security paperwork. Now what
happens when that copier gets old and is sold on eBay? Gulp.
Computerworld has more of the story.

Copiers are hardly highly-secure devices, and such data could be
accessed via a network connection, too.

The wake-up call is, surprisingly, being delivered by Sharp, a
manufacturer of these devices. The company polled Americans and found
that 54 percent of those surveyed had no idea that photocopiers stored
digital versions of everything put on the glass. Count me in the
majority, I guess.

What to do? Naturally, Sharp is promoting its newer copiers, which
encrypt digitally stored copies and "virtually shred" recent ones so
they can't be recovered. If you've got such features on your office
machine, make sure you use them. But also remember that next time you
make copies at Kinko's or another copy shop, you could be leaving
behind a copy of anything you reproduce. Behave accordingly.

___________________

JamBoi
Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com


 
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