10 things you should do to securely dispose of computers

picture source: http://mason.gmu.edu

If you've read my "4 Ways To Recycle That Old PC" piece, then you should be so guilt-filled that scrapping your old PC is out of the question. You're probably deciding to give the PC to charity (such a noble choice). But before you box that PC up and send it on it's way, you need to know a few things first.

We've covered the dangers of e-waste and how to protect the environment, now we need to discuss how to protect you! The average user isn't aware of the fact that "deleting" something in Windows doesn't truly getting rid of it. The data still resides on the hard disk until it's overwritten several times. The only thing that is deleted is the link to that data, which makes it so we can't see it while in Windows. Unless you have software installed that deletes a file by overwriting the data several times, the chances of retrieving your data is pretty high.

That presents a problem if you've accessed/stored any sensitive data on your PC. In the following article Chad Perrin discusses 10 important things you should do when you want to dispose of your PC. These are principles that can also be done when recycling a PC. Read the article here!