Your PC Team

Did you know your copier is secretly keeping an image of everything you copy, fax, or scan?  It’s true.  Most commercial copiers put in service in the last 10 years have a built-in hard drive that keeps an image of every copy, scan, or fax you put through the machine.

According to news sources, over 60% of business owners weren’t aware that copy machines had built-in hard drives.  While this document saving device may have practical application within your business, it has much wider negative implications when you trade in your copier or the lease expires.  If hard drives aren’t wiped clean, unscrupulous people can use free software, downloaded from the Internet, to pull each and every one of the documents that had previously been copied, faxed, or scanned.

You work tirelessly to protect the information stored on your computers, yet right in your office is a secret identity theft weapon lying in wait for your copier lease to expire or a trade-in to occur.  While the implications are huge for the loss of privacy, the bigger implication is in regard to identity theft and loss of personal information.

At Your PC Team, our copiers are rotated as any other business equipment; however, we take the extra step of scrubbing hard drives to delete all information before we allow the copier to leave our building.  We encourage you to remember to do this, as well, when you change or replace copiers in order to carry through on the vital step of protecting you, your company, and your employees’ sensitive information.

Below is the link to a CBS story regarding this and just how prevalent this problem has become.  While we all may be doing our best in protecting information, we are still not immune to identity theft and should continue to be vigilant in who we give our information to.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6412572n&tag=mg;mostpopvideo

For more information on how Your PC Team can help protect you from this, and other types of security risks within your organization, contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call (404) 254-6638 today.