Scary

"Graham Murray" wrote in message
...
"Snowdon Computers" writes:

Bought a laptop at a liquidation auction, had been previously owned by
an IT
sales company. Had a gander at the hard drive first (as you do) and
there
were some pretty scary letters to customers - such as

Is whoever sold you the laptop not breaking the Data Protection Act
in not removing such 'personal information' before selling it to you?

I don't think the Information Commission would be too happy with the auction
house, no. However as I am a registered data handler with them, on this
occasion no law has been broken.
--

Best Regards
Niel Humphreys
Snowdon Computers Ltd

Bought a laptop at a liquidation auction, had been previously owned by an IT
sales company. Had a gander at the hard drive first (as you do) and there
were some pretty scary letters to customers - such as
Is whoever sold you the laptop not breaking the Data Protection Act
in not removing such 'personal information' before selling it to you?

Amiga Inc recently had some office equipment seized and sold at auction -
again, their drives were not wiped. I seem to remember the legal position
being that the buyer of goods sold at this sort of auction were granted
good title to anything held on there... There will be more on it at
www.ann.lu if anyone wanted to do a search on what happened in that
particular case.

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"Snowdon Computers" wrote:

Is whoever sold you the laptop not breaking the Data Protection Act
in not removing such 'personal information' before selling it to you?

I don't think the Information Commission would be too happy with the auction
house, no. However as I am a registered data handler with them, on this
occasion no law has been broken.

Which means you're no doubt aware that a) you don't "own" the data on
it so probably shouldn't be reading it and b) most definitely should
NOT be broadcasting or otherwise making it available to others unless
the originators (that'll be the company and their customers in this
case) have explicitly given permission for it to be used in this
manner.

I'm sure it makes interesting reading though! ;-)

--
iv Paul iv

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"Paul Hopwood" wrote in message
...
"Snowdon Computers" wrote:

Is whoever sold you the laptop not breaking the Data Protection Act
in not removing such 'personal information' before selling it to you?

I don't think the Information Commission would be too happy with the
auction
house, no. However as I am a registered data handler with them, on this
occasion no law has been broken.

Which means you're no doubt aware that a) you don't "own" the data on
it so probably shouldn't be reading it and b) most definitely should
NOT be broadcasting or otherwise making it available to others unless
the originators (that'll be the company and their customers in this
case) have explicitly given permission for it to be used in this
manner.

I'm sure it makes interesting reading though! ;-)


Aye, that's why I didn't give any names or otherwise out. The company is
bankrupt and the letters did not have address details on them - I assume the
customer info was somewhere else in a database.

....not that I regularly trawl bankrupt PCs to be nosey when I get them in.
;o)

Incidentally if I should not have been reading it - were PCWorld prosecuted
for reading the data on Gary Glitter's computer when they took it in for a
repair I wonder?


--

Best Regards
Niel Humphreys
Snowdon Computers Ltd

"Snowdon Computers" wrote:

Aye, that's why I didn't give any names or otherwise out. The company is
bankrupt and the letters did not have address details on them - I assume the
customer info was somewhere else in a database.

...not that I regularly trawl bankrupt PCs to be nosey when I get them in.
;o)

Incidentally if I should not have been reading it - were PCWorld prosecuted
for reading the data on Gary Glitter's computer when they took it in for a
repair I wonder?

Their action was almost certainly defensible (legally at any rate).
They could contend that they accessed the data in the execution of
their duties and, given Mr Glitter presumably provided them with the
machine to carry out some kind of repair or maintenance, permission to
access his data was inferred.

Anything else they found could not legally be shared with any other
party, but as it was pretty clear the material was obscene and a
criminal offence had been committed they had a duty to involve the
Police. Indeed, had they failed to do so, they might of been liable to
prosecution themselves.

--
iv Paul iv

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Snowdon Computers wrote:

Incidentally if I should not have been reading it - were PCWorld prosecuted
for reading the data on Gary Glitter's computer when they took it in for a
repair I wonder?

I'm somewhat intrigued as to how PCWorld actually managed to find it.
Presumably Glitter wasn't stupid enough to have a folder called "child
porn piccies" on his desktop or something.

My laptop is off for repair now and I don't particularly want the repair
man looking around and finding PGP private keys, e-mail passwords, and
other private stuff.

Cheers,
Chris Howells

I'm somewhat intrigued as to how PCWorld actually managed to find it.
Presumably Glitter wasn't stupid enough to have a folder called "child
porn piccies" on his desktop or something.

He probably had them all in "my documents" :-}

Lets face it, how many users do you know who actually have enough wits
about them to be able mass-rename every jpg in a directory to something
that isn`t a recognised file extension...

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On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 20:45:57 +0100, (Chris Howells)
wrote:

Snowdon Computers wrote:

Incidentally if I should not have been reading it - were PCWorld prosecuted
for reading the data on Gary Glitter's computer when they took it in for a
repair I wonder?

I'm somewhat intrigued as to how PCWorld actually managed to find it.
Presumably Glitter wasn't stupid enough to have a folder called "child
porn piccies" on his desktop or something.

My laptop is off for repair now and I don't particularly want the repair
man looking around and finding PGP private keys, e-mail passwords, and
other private stuff.

May well have just done a seach for images, or a check in the internet
cache to see if there were any cached viruses/executables there and
bingo a lot of interesting jpegs found.
--
This post does not reflect the opinions of all saggy cloth
cats be they a bit loose at the seams or not
GSX600F - Matilda the (now) two eared teapot, complete with
white gaffer tape, though no rectal chainsaw

Whenever I need to send my computer for work, I force the company to sign a
declaration that they wil not access any unneccesary folders. Most of my
work is on my machine and is quite sensitive

David McCallum

"Chris Howells" wrote in message
...
Snowdon Computers wrote:

Incidentally if I should not have been reading it - were PCWorld
prosecuted
for reading the data on Gary Glitter's computer when they took it in for
a
repair I wonder?

I'm somewhat intrigued as to how PCWorld actually managed to find it.
Presumably Glitter wasn't stupid enough to have a folder called "child
porn piccies" on his desktop or something.

My laptop is off for repair now and I don't particularly want the repair
man looking around and finding PGP private keys, e-mail passwords, and
other private stuff.

Cheers,
Chris Howells

"David McCallum" wrote:

Whenever I need to send my computer for work, I force the company to sign a
declaration that they wil not access any unneccesary folders. Most of my
work is on my machine and is quite sensitive

Possibly a sensible precaution, much in the same way many companies
ask partners to sign NDAs.

OTOH, it's not absolutely necessary as the Data Protection Act,
Computer Misuse Act and, quite often, contractual obligations,
prohibit access to information unless permission is explicitly given
or it's reasonable to do so in execution of their duties.

Indeed, actually putting some kind of explicit "thou shall not"
agreement in place is just as likely to increase the level of
curiosity. ;-)

--
iv Paul iv

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