Risks in selling a computer

Manama : Merely deleting sensitive or personal content from a computer does not make it ready for selling it to a second party, experts have warned.

Those who sell their computers are putting themselves at risk if they had saved sensitive or personal content in it. According to experts, the seller must not only delete such content but they will need to use a special software to remove it before reselling it. This is because even after the files are deleted or formatted, anyone can retrieve those files with the help of recovery softwares. A number of steps must be taken before selling computer, said IT expert Hamad Al Khan.

“Simply deleting the files is not secure enough. The computer may tell you that it is permanently deleted but in reality that is not the case. Anyone can easily retrieve the deleted files. The next step that can be taken is to format the computer. This will cause the computer to forget the location of the files making it harder for anyone to retrieve the files. However, even after taking this step, it is not permanently deleted. There are software available that can retrieve the files even in this case,” he said. 

“So if you have had sensitive data stored in the laptop you can take another step. You will need to use file-shredding sofwares which will hide the locations of the deleted files. So when someone tries to retrieve it, it becomes almost impossible to find it,” he added.

Sharing a similar view, IT expert Sari Mashal also recommended using file shredding softwares before selling. “When we delete a file, its file name is changed to an unreadable character but it is not erased. However, there are softwares available online that are highly advanced in protecting the user in such cases. Those who wish to sell their computer must download and use these file shredding softwares if they have had sensitive data stored, if not they are putting themselves at risk,” he said.