BMICy Sophie Kleeman, posted December 11, 2015

We worry about our personal information falling into the wrong hands when our phones are in our pockets and our laptops are on our desks. We set up firewalls, craft long, intricate passwords and know not to open email attachments from strange senders. We treat security at first as groundwork, then as maintenance.

Often, when we discard our old devices, we forget they continue to store our whole lives. The detail held in their memory cards and hard drives lies dormant. When it’s time to recycle or resell them, some of us don’t give much thought to the hardware that still holds mountains of personal information.

“If you send your computer out without wiping it, you may as well write your social security number down and put it down in Central Park,” Sean Magann, the vice president of sales and marketing for Sims, an electronic waste recycling company, told Mic.

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