Just to get things going here, if you are just throwing your old machines out when you are done with them, you may be handing the public your personal info. If you are moving all your personal files to the trash and hitting “empty” you may still be doing so as well. When you go and delete a file, only the link between the computer’s index and the deleted file goes away. This lets you computer know that that space can be overwritten. But all the bits and pieces of the deleted file will remain on the machine until they are actually overwritten. The deleted files can still be retrieved with a data recovery program ($50) . To remove data from your hard drive permanently, it needs to be wiped clean.
If you are going to throw out or sell and old computer of yours, the smartest thing to do is “write zeros to the hard drive” this means the entire machine is blank. Not even an operating system will remain.
Of course if you are in fact throwing it out, you could always remove the physical hard drive itself and play home run derby with it for half an hour. You could alway look into recycling or donating after the computer has been wiped clean.
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