Bank account details belonging to thousands of Britons are being sold in 
West Africa for less than £20 each, the BBC's Real Story programme has 
found. It discovered that fraudsters in Nigeria were able to find internet 
banking data stored on recycled PCs sent from the UK to Africa.

The information can be found on a PC's hard disk, which is easy to access if 
the drive is not wiped before sending. Anti-fraud expert Owen Roberts said 
simply deleting files was not enough.  It is surprising how easy it is to 
obtain documents people leave on their computers
Owen Roberts, CPP Group


Users should instead use a programme to wipe their hard drive before they 
sell or give away their PC, a process which over-writes what is already 
contained on the drive. Alternatively, people should remove their hard 
drives before they give away their computers, he said. 'Surprisingly easy' 
"It is surprising how easy it is to obtain documents people leave on their 
computers," said Mr Roberts, who is head of identity fraud at CPP Group.

SAFE PC RECYCLING

If possible, remove hard drives from PCs before recycling Use commercial 
erasing software, Examples include McAfee QuickClean, Acronis Drive Cleanser 
or ISafeguard Freeware Sign-up for a recycling service run by your PC 
manufacturer Some hard drive manufacturers also offer separate recycling 
programs. Real Story found that second-hand computers from all over the 
developed world could be found in virtually every PC market in Nigeria's 
commercial capital of Lagos.

It said that while there was a genuine market for second-hand PCs in West 
Africa, identity fraud was a real problem. Many of the PCs it found on sale 
in Lagos had come from UK council recycling points.

People are still being urged to give away their old PCs, but only after they 
have wiped the hard drive - not just to remove any bank details but also 
other personal information such as home addresses. The Information 
Commissioner's Office, the UK government's regulatory office dealing with 
data protection, said companies had a legal requirement to delete people's 
personal information from their computers when it was no longer needed.

"It is essential that companies have appropriate procedures in place to 
ensure that personal records on computer hard drives are rendered 
unrecoverable when they dispose of computer equipment," said Assistant 
Commissioner Phil Jones. "Under the Data Protection Act companies have a 
duty to store personal information securely and delete it when it is no 
longer required."

Real Story's investigation into the risk of identity theft from old PCs will 
be broadcast on BBC 1 at 19:30 on Monday, 14 August.

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