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What your office photocopier knows about you
By Brian Clark Howard
The Daily Green News blog
Did you know that most office photocopiers are built to save digital images of documents? It's true.
When CBS News recently purchased some used photocopiers that were destined for new customers, their computer technician was able to easily retrieve thousands of pages of sensitive documents from their hard drives: perfect images of personal medical records, pay stubs, and tax forms -- even the blueprint of a building near Ground Zero and reports of and drug crimes from the Buffalo, N.Y., police department. There were home addresses, social security numbers, and medical histories aplenty.
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"Before you drop off that used machine to a lessor or for a charitable write-off, make sure that you have totally erased the hard disk or removed and destroyed it," cautions Peter Fannon, the vice president of technology policy for Panasonic.
Fannon adds that Panasonic has built-in security features into all their imaging products since 2005, and that the company works to educate authorized dealers to tell users to enable them. According to Fannon, the products ship with such security features as image overwrite, encryption, hard disk lock (which prevents the drive from being used in any other device), and security passwords that prevent making unauthorized changes. However, the default setting of these features is off, so they have to be activated by the user.
"Fax machines also have large image memories that can store a significant amount of data. To eliminate concerns about that, we have the option Panasonic Image Memory Eraser Function, which erases all fax data after each transmission, including where it is being sent, the sending number, and all data," Fannon adds. As for older copiers, Fannon said they sometimes came with a combination of physical locks and password protection.
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Recycling electronics still makes sense
It's important to point out that legitimate security concerns should not prevent people from properly recycling old copiers and other electronic equipment.
These devices contain valuable metals and toxic components that contribute to our growing glut of e-waste -- only about 12% of which is recycled.
Just as with recycling computers and cell phones, the key is to make sure any data is completely erased or overwritten with junk data (use the device's deletion program, for instance, or reformat the hard drive).
If you are not comfortable doing that, find an IT professional to help you. Most manufacturers also now offer authorized recycling drop-off locations (find recyclers with the "get local info" search on The Daily Green homepage).
In the case of Panasonic, there are more than 650 locations around the country. "Our contractors are required to destroy or clean the data, without having access to it," said Fannon, who adds that all consumer products are broken down and recycled domestically. "In the case of commercial devices, they could conceivably be exported or resold, but before any of that happens, our contracts require, and our auditing confirms, the data is cleaned."
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[Remainder of the article available at link at top of this page]
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Holy crap...just watched the video from CBS on this from that link....WOW
UPDATE:
I have just found out at my work we lease all of them so if there is a problem we call them. They come in with a replacement and off they go with the old one but now after seeing the video things will be different I am told. It's just one of them things you thought you did not have to worry about......I mean who wants an old run down copier
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** OT; but Panasonic-related **
Discussion in 'Panasonic' started by TopCop1988, Sep 22, 2010.
