You know how you should always reformat hard drives and reinstall macOS before selling or giving away (or even recycling) an old Mac? It turns out that that many office photocopiers also have hard drives that store the copied documents and from which those documents can be recovered. Ouch.
We have this issue in work, colleagues have whole term papers and handouts pre-loaded on photocopiers. Protected by a 4 digit pin. And I have seen some of those 4-digit pins…
Never thought about the recycling/resale issue. Another matter again.
I bought a used Mac that had some flavor of MkLinux installed on it.
“Hey, this is Unix, I know this.”
So I poked around. The computer was evidently the main server for some company’s entire financial department. Not only did I have all their finances, I also had all their payroll.
I did try to contact the company, but the one thing I didn’t have, and couldn’t find, was contact information.
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Ouch! It’s surprising that someone who had the savvy to install MkLinux wouldn’t have known to erase the drive before disposing of the Mac. There are of course any number of explanations for why it might have happened (like the tech-savvy person being fired before the computer was disposed of, or the entire company being shut down too quickly for anyone to get to the drive), and I’d love to know what really went down.
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That was my speculation, but I wasn’t able to find out quickly, and then it became a moot point as I wiped the drive and installed… Public Beta? Yeah, I think that was the right time period.