Fresh Bits

Recently in the news there have been stories about how a Staples Business Depot in Ottawa sold a returned hard drive containing hundreds of personal files on it.  See the original article here, and here. 

No doubt Staples should have some procedure in place to ensure that returned equipment is in “like new” condition when it’s resold. And in this case - meaning free of any data. 

But I fail to see why Staples is being singled out here. Everyone - including individuals and companies - is responsible for protecting personal information under Canadian privacy legislation. And that includes Professor Jill Vickers and her son.  The law doesn’t differentiate between companies and regular people.  Prof. Vickers and her son had a responsibility to ensure that the data was wiped clean - completely clean - from the hard disk prior to returning it to Staples.  That’s the law.  Simply deleting the files is not sufficient.  And that’s assuming they were in fact deleted.

Here’s how most responsible companies deal with hard drives:  They’re destroyed. Not returned to the manufacturer. Simply destroyed.  Taken apart by IT staff and the platters smashed.  At the very least, the drive is completely wiped clean with specialized software.

It’s not rocket science, people.   I own a data processing company, and we’ve had our share of flaky hard drives. Never once have we returned one. Under warranty or not, if they’re pulled from service, they’re physically destroyed. It’s the cost of doing business when you deal with confidential information.

Fresh Bit

A couple of friends of ours joined Weight Watchers recently and have been really pleased.  They’re not really trying to lose a whole bunch of weight, just a little, and also trying to focus on just eating in moderation.

Anyways, I created a little points calculator for them.  Enter the calories, and the grams of fat & fiber, and it will do the quick math for you. Bon Appetit!

Fresh Bit

“Mega” lotteries and raffles in Canada are an important tool used by hospital foundations and other charitable organizations to raise large amounts of money to support their causes.  All of them have web sites, and in some markets, the competition to sell tickets is fierce. After all, only so many people out there are willing to support their local hospitals by purchasing a lottery ticket. 

One site we’ve always used is Dream Lottery Canada, which purports to list all the active charitable lotteries in Canada. I cannot say for sure whether the claim is true, but it certainly lists most of them.  I noticed recently that they changed the format of their site, and I have to say I think it looks pretty good.

In this economy, helping to support charitable causes and health care is an important thing to do. And Dream Lottery Canada seems to fulfill that goal admirably.

Now that’s a Fresh Bit.

Fresh Bit