Copier hard drive will retain images of all your copies
The following five minute video of a CBS investigative effort, was just sent to me by a family member. Are you aware that every copier sold since 2002 contains a hard drive that stores every image? Consider what we copy every day.
Your private, or business data, be it financial, medical and legal communication has been stored on a hard disc buried inside your machine.
So if you have any plans to trade it in, or simply send it to be recycled when you purchase a replacement, let me suggest that you open it up and remove the drive. One option for businesses to consider is encryption equipment.
Note: Getting 100 emails per day this one fell thru the cracks. A property rights colleague in LA sent the same report to me a month ago. However, we should be aware of the exposure as depicted in the CBS report. Video Link follows below.
From Slashdot.itwbennett writes “In a letter to US Representative Ed Markey, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said that the FTC has begun contacting copy machine makers, resellers, and office supply stores to inform them about privacy concerns over the images that can be stored on the machines’ hard drives and trying to ‘determine whether they are warning their customers about these risks … and whether manufacturers and resellers are providing options for secure copying.'”
http://www.flixxy.com/copy-machines-security-risk.htm
Oh c’mon, do we really want the government to step in and tell copy machine manufacturers what features they can design into their machines? Oh, these dastardly government intrusions into the free market…when will they end? LOL.
anon.
I’ve missed you. Welcome home.
No, I don’t want big brother to have access to my personal copies. The bigger question is why do manufacturers need the hard disc in the first place
Interesting, I remember a selling point of the copies sold now is that they retain e-copies of your records.
It is all about saving paper. (Maybe)
“No, I don’t want big brother to have access to my personal copies.”
So you have no problem with government regulating that particular feature of copiers?
“The bigger question is why do manufacturers need the hard disc in the first place?”
One would have to assume that they see it as a positive feature that some consumers will appreciate. I can see instances where having a memory on-board and being able to retrieve previously-scanned documents would be beneficial. Beyond that, all it really needs is for the consumer to be able to clear the drive…permanently. If that’s true, then it just becomes a case of “buyer beware”.