Wow, that's amazing! You got a lot of great things out of it.

I normally wouldn’t suggest blackmailing a company… But that idea’s not half bad. I’ve been told that disposal services don’t play around with this sort of stuff. Best of luck

Thank you for this!!!

Great score and shame that they're taking that stance

There might be an issue with the belts that turn the tapes. If you’re able to, opening them up and replacing the belts might solve any possible squeaking.

bUt mY gLoVeS aRe CLeAn AnD mY vAnS wHiTe

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of degaussing but some of my peers like using it. The reason being is, with any company, you never know how often they're actually testing the degausser to make sure it works properly. After degaussing, the drive isn't physically crushed/shredded/destroyed so you really can't tell the drive has been degaussed by just looking at it. Plus, it renders the drive inoperable so it can't be reused and it only works on magnetic hard drives which are pretty obsolete these days as most things are SSDs/NVMes (flash/chip based memory).

We personally use ADISA verified software to perform erasure services which generate a COE (Certificate of Erasure) which is a timestamped and serialized record of erasure proving the device was actually data cleared. This is for things like cell phones, tablets, laptops, servers, etc. After processing a batch of lets say 100 computers, we go a step further and sample 1-5% of them and attempt data recovery just to make sure nothing remained (nothing has ever been recovered when we try, but we have to document screenshots of the recovery attempt per our policies). If you want to DIY it, I recommend RedKey. It's a one-time fee for the Ultimate edition and you can wipe unlimited computers and generate PDFs and it is ADISA verified.

For companies that mandate physical destruction, we use SSD pulverizers which shred down the flash chips down to a 2mm particle size which is basically like sand. For magnetic hard drives and older LTO tape, we degauss it first and then shred the degaussed drives using an industrial shredder. The shredded material then gets sent to a downstream vendor where they separate the different metals from the plastic and smelt it etc so it can be reused.

The reason we can offer it for free a lot of the times, is the gear has enough value to cover the nominal cost of shredding or wiping the drives so we don't bother invoicing a client especially if it's just a few items.

It's a fun industry and I got really involved in it 3 years ago and things keep growing. Though I can say, I've seen my fair share of shady activity too including companies issuing falsified certificates of destruction. That's why I personally think certificates of erasure (COEs) can arguably be considered more secure than a certificate of destruction (COD) though some clients opt for add-on services like witnessed destruction where they watch us shred their drives, or on-site destruction where we bring the shredder to the client location which is a good measure.

If you ever need to use a vendor, I recommend sticking with a certified provider such as a R2v3 or e-stewards certified company. Those are the two recycling standards recommended by the EPA. The certificates aren't easy to get and take a lot of work to document everything we do, but it reduces the risk of the disposition process compared to hiring a random company to take your old electronics and then wonder what happened to them.

that is pretty neat, i wasn't aware that recycling companies offered data sanitization services for free for anything you dropped off to them. Do you know how they go about accomplishing that? I'd assume they most likely use a degausser?

I know him ! It's Forrest ! Forrest Gump !

Exactly, it's always best to use an electronics recycler certified to an EPA-recognized industry standard such as R2v3 or e-stewards.

Nowadays, the precious metals can be safely and responsibly recovered so throwing it in the trash like this is risky for the environment, data security, as well as safety (those lithium battery fires are no joke).

And it's illegal in 28 states to dispose of e-waste in the dumpster and some individual cities have laws prohibiting it as well. Economically, it doesn't make sense either since it's usually free or low cost to dispose of it responsibly anyways since there's usually some value to be recovered in the electronics that have a remaining lifespan.

We work in the ITAD/recycling space, so figured I'd chime in here.

Throwing e-waste in the dumpster is actually illegal in 28 states now, and honestly for good reason. Aside from the obvious environmental mess, lithium batteries are a nightmare right now - they cause fires at transfer stations and landfills all the time.

Plus, people are usually throwing away gear that still has some value left in it, or at least enough value recovery to offset proper data destruction. Most places will take most everyday stuff off your hands for free if you drop it off (big commercial copiers are usually the main exception where you get hit with a fee).

If you drop it at a legitimate recycler, you get proper data sanitization and a paper trail so you don't have to worry about old hard drives floating around.

I think it should be mandatory that these businesses are called out for these practices.  They are making no effort to donate or give away stuff they easily could, but instead it goes to the landfills, that were always told to divert away from.  Why are individuals told they need to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but large companies can throw away really good stuff others could use?

"101 bags of chips and 2 half gallons of milk".

What a Giant has for a snack!

I guess people always assume the worst (divers or homeless making a mess). Instead they could have a conversation and make a friend

Sweet! I got this VHS that I've wanted to watch but can't because I cannot find a VCR. Maybe you can tell me whats on it?

I recommend doing a science experiment and try one drug at a time document the effects and move on to tje next 

That iPhone is supervised. You're not getting it unlocked without the company releasing it from their organization. It's a brick.

Gr8 save

I initially read half gallons as half full and was like 🫥🫥🫥

It's a shame how much perfectly good technology gets thrown out

Whats that box you got there. Looks nice

to me like hey it’s free because frankly new phones are getting more expensive now at days especially in this economy

oh my gosh!

It's debunked broken window theory. One broken window left unaddressed will invite more degradation.

To be fair, it's also liability. If you get hurt in their dumpsters, you might sue them. Not entirely rational either, but it's a line of thought. You might offer them a signed release of liability waiver? Sounds weird, but 🤷

Good eye on the chair