[thelist] [OT] Stolen laptop + Rails tip

[T. R. Valentine]

On 16/02/06, Ian Anderson <ian at zstudio.co.uk> wrote:

> b. Is it likely that the person that gets it will be able to boot it up
> and access the hard disk as a mounted volume from a different PC?

I've taken hard drives from Windows PCs (NT, 2k) that wouldn't boot,
installed them in a different PC as a slave and been able to access
all the files.


> c. Booting from a floppy or CD, do they get to see files on the hard disk?

Yes.


> d. Can they reinstall Windows while preserving all the files and settings?

Preserve files, yes. Preserve settings, no.

> I am somewhat concerned about personal information and things like user
> logins. Dreamweaver and my FTP program are set up for one-click access
> to a bunch of client sites, and my email archive has a lot of passwords
> in it.

They can probably preserve passwords; reading passwords is more
difficult, but not impossible.


> How much risk is there of this information being explored by the
> recipient? I am hoping that the thing will be wiped sooner rather than
> later - I understand from the cops that this is usual practice because
> the software is personalised and therefore traceable to the original
> owner, but I'm still a bit worried.

Wiping completely clean (low level format) is what I've typically
seen. It is extremely difficult to remove user names completely
without doing so.

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T. R. Valentine
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