When computers from official government buildings are replaced or removed in New Jersey, they can end up being sold or donated, but an audit found dozens of computers that were shrink-wrapped and ready for auction, with hard drives that were never wiped clean.
The hard drives contained personal information from sensitive government files, including taxpayers’ social security numbers, computer passwords of government employees, private judicial memos, and even data from child abuse cases.
The audit spanned 58 hard drives stored in government warehouses, and found that 46 of them had not been wiped clean before being scrapped.
The agency behind the audit hopes it is a wake-up call to state governments around the country to take extreme caution with the highly sensitive information it stores on computer hard drives.
Via AP
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