Your Office Copy Machine Might Digitally Store Thousands of Documents That Get Passed on at Resale
(CBS) At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports almost every one of them holds a secret.
Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.
In the process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data.
If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold.
"The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen said, "that information would be very valuable." ...
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Police Records Show Up In Copiers In NJ
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - A copy machine may seem harmless, but it's actually a potential jackpot for identity thieves. A CBS News investigation uncovered stunning, confidential information on an old machine in New Jersey from the Buffalo Police Department.
Did you know that almost every digital copier made since 2002 has a hard drive that stores thousands of images and unless you scrub the hard drive they all remain? So your old copier could end up being resold through a warehouse like this in New Jersey, where CBS News investigators bought four used copiers and two of them happened to be old Buffalo Police copiers.
John Johnson of Digital Copier Security said, "We got some documents here in the glass. This machine came from the city of Buffalo Police Sex Crimes Division. This machine has 249,000 copies, has 42,000 prints on it, and it's also used as a fax machine."
A half hour later, the hard drive was removed, then using a forensic software program available free on the internet, tens of thousands of documents were downloaded including detailed domestic violence complaints, and a list of wanted Buffalo sex offenders. On a second machine from the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit, CBS News found a list of targets from the Operation Impact Drug raid three years ago...
