The Security Mentor

The latest illustration is Security problems with photocopiers.

The manufacturers apparently decided that if the copier needs to crop, blow up, or make a bazillion copies of a document, it should scan it in and store it digitally. Makes perfect sense. If there is a need for any noticeable amount of storage, the cheap way to do it is to use a hard disk. That's the kind of machine you'll find in places like Kinko's.

You're starting to see the problem now. When does that scanned copy get overwritten? When the copier needs the space for something else? That could take a while. I don't even know where to look for a new hard disk under 40 gigabytes. That's room for a whole lot of tax returns before the first one needs to get overwritten.

So then you've got your tax return stored on a copier in a public location.

It's not the easiest way for an identity thief to get your personal information, but you do have to wonder what happens to those hard disks when someone buys the copier secondhand.