Well, here we go again. This has been going on for years now however, it does not get the press or recognition that it deserves. But before I get into the meat of this story here's a real quick history lesson. Before 2002 the majority of copiers that were manufactured had been "Analog" technology. Meaning that when you made a copy of a document the image was positively charged and put on a rotating piece of film where a piece of paper that was negatively charged was mechanically placed on the film and the toner stuck to the paper. If you wanted, say 15 copies of your document, the original had to be scanned 15 times to make 15 copies.
After 2002 the "digital" age of copiers came into being and things were about to change. Now, if you wanted to make 15 copies of a document the original only had to be scanned one time and the digital information was processed by the copiers' mother board and the document information was stored in a "Hard Drive." A normal black and white copier hard drive can hold upwards of 20,000 plus pages of information. Millions of these copiers have been sold and a percentage of them would end up in "self-serve" copy centers. Just imagine going into one of these copy centers and make copies of your bank statement or some other pieces of information for a bank loan. The images of what you printed would still be on the copiers' hard drive. Eventually the hard drive fills up and the images start being replaced by others so your document images would eventually be deleted.
Identity thieves buy used copiers at wholesale clearing houses for cheap. They then remove the copiers' hard drive and hook it up to a program that can read the information and it shows up on a computer screen. This turned out to be an absolute "Treasure Trove" of information for the Identity Thief. When the machines were purchased they don't need to know where it came from, only the personal identifiable information is all they cared about.
One batch of machines, that was being reported by a news agency doing a story on this subject, were purchased by identity thieves at a clearing house were used in the past at a police station. Think about that for a second. What kind of information can be had from a copier inside of a police station? It just so happens that the copier was located in the investigations unit of the police facility! That's not good at all.
So what do you do to protect yourself from this type of identity theft? Obviously, don't make copies of your sensitive information at a copy center. Do it at home on your PC and printer. If and when you do replace your old copier with a new one take the hard drive out of the old one and drill holes in it or smash it up and destroy it. Even home copiers can be tapped for useful information.
Five Myths Concerning Identity Fraud A Review of Krolls Identity Theft Shield Program The Urgency of ID Theft Prevention
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