My friend had a very old PC (Windows 98) that broke so I asked on Freecycle if I anyone had an old PC going spare. I had one reply from a couple who said they had one in their cellar and I could have it if I wanted.

So, I picked it up last night and this morning booted it up to see if it worked etc. They had not wiped their files or anything. Even worse, the administrator account had no password (but the second user did - go figure).

Luckily I am an honest kinda girl so I didn’t snoop but just deleted everything I could find. I did think about mailing them to see if they wanted the stuff but as I knew it had been in the cellar for months reckoned that they didn’t. (I hope - I just emptied the recycle bin).

After all the media stories about lost laptops with sensitive data you’d think us ordinary folk would realise enough to wipe a PC before we offload it. I was speaking to another friend yesterday who had just dumped a couple of old PCs at the tip. Apparently the HDDs go in a separate place to be crushed - so she hadn’t wiped them because she trusted enough to think that no-one was going to look. I shuddered inside but didn’t say anything - it was too late anyway.

Maybe someone - not the government because, well, look at their track record - should be starting a campaign to ensure that people do know what they’re doing when they get rid of an old computer, be it giving or throwing away.

BTW - Freecycle is ace and my friend (plus her young children) is going to be one happy person once I’ve sorted this PC out. Just installing Firefox and OpenOffice for her and making sure AVG etc is up-to-date.