EPC’s Computer Recyling Blog

EPC is Employer of the Year – Energy Efficiency

At a recent St. Charles Chamber of Commerce luncheon, EPC was awarded the 2009 Employer of the Year in the newly created Energy Efficient category. This award was mainly focused on our environmental commitment and their efforts to reduce energy consumption.
Presenting the award was St. Charles Mayor, Patty York who said in announcing the award, “EPC’s commitment to a clean environment by recycling paper, plastic and computer equipment, refurbishing components and avoiding landfills is excellent.” York added that EPC’s “involvement of your employees in state and national recycling organizations is commendable.”
In addition to the award, EPC was presented with 6 framed proclamations from the St. Charles City and County, the Missouri House and Senate, as well as the US House of Representatives.
President Dan Fuller accepted the award and commented on EPC’s 200+ employees, “While I had the pleasure of receiving the accolades for the award, this is much more about all of you and your commitment to EPC. Without a dedicated, hard working commitment by you none of these awards would be possible.”

Tags: employer of the year, energy efficiency, epc, epc inc., Patty York, st. charles, st. charles chamber of commerce

Saying Goodbye to an Old (36″) Friend…

I can remember the first time I saw a “large screen TV.”

It was a 36”, gigantic Magnavox CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) television that was in the Electronics department at my local Walmart and had our family name written all over it.  As our first wedding anniversary eased into our crosshairs, along with my wife’s Walmart-based discount, we eventually pulled the trigger on our new, electronically-inclined family member and brought it home – heaved it home was probably more apt.  Going from a 20 inch television to an epic 36” motherload of black plastic and huge CRT tube was literally vision-changing in our house.  Everything was more crisp.  Colors POPPED out from our newly-cornered visual companion. Closed captions were like miniature billboards and life was good as we welcomed our tandem anniversary present and newfound family member home.

That was 1996.

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Tags: crt televisions, Electronics Recycling, epc, Inc., old tvs, plasma tvs, television recycling, the sound room

Buy a used hard drive on eBay, get government secrets for free!

Imagine it, you purchased a computer on eBay, plug it in, and find top secret missle defense secrets. What would you do? This is the situation a research group at Longwood University found themselves in after purchasing a used hard drive from the popular auction site.

This hard drive reportedly contained files from Lockheed Martin, a large US military contractor. The data recovered included: test launch procedures for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ground-to-air missile defense system, security policies, blueprints of facilities and social security numbers for individual employees.

A representative from Lockheed Martin is quoted in the article as saying:

Lockheed Martin is not aware of any compromise of data related to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program. Until Lockheed Martin can evaluate the hard drive in question, it is not possible to comment further on its potential contents or source.

Fortunately, this drive as purchased as part of a controlled study to see what information could be recovered from used hard drives and did not fall into the wrong hands. The study also uncovered other sensitive information including bank account details, medical records, confidential business plans, financial company data, personal id numbers, and job descriptions.

The drives were bought from the UK, America, Germany, France and Australia by BT’s Security Research Centre in collaboration with the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US.

A spokesman for the project said they found 34 per cent of the hard disks scrutinized contained ‘information of either personal data that could be identified to an individual or commercial data identifying a company or organization.’

Even though the information in this case did not fall into the wrong hands, this story illustrates the importance of having a controlled data destruction process in every organization. Ask yourself this: can you track every computer, every hard drive after it is pulled from production? Do you know for a fact that every hard drive is wiped or destroyed? If you cannot answer yes to both questions, you owe it to yourself to work with a vendor that can fill this gap.

A hat tip to ExportLawBlog for their analysis of the incident.

Tags: data destruction, Data Security, ebay

Cell Phones Tell Secrets From The Grave!

Recent research, from Regenersis, suggests that close to 100% of all cell phones disposed of contain information that could be brought back to life.

If not removed, all those pictures from Cancun… all the music you’ve downloaded… and yes, all those text messages to your mother can be retrieved! So next time you upgrade to the latest and greatest smart phone, make sure you dust off the manual for the old one and take the time to run through the steps to perform a complete reset of the unit.

On the other hand, you could also take it to a company, such as EPC, who will completely shred the unit to help protect any overlooked data within.