A vast e-wasteland: Are your digital secrets for sale?

["Dissent" <Dissent () pogowasright org>]

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/world/16289389.htm

LAGOS, Nigeria - Computer files on these American high school students
are private and revealing.

Some of the students have learning disabilities. Many scored low on
tests. One suffered a brain injury as a child, and another ran with
gangs, according to California school records that include names,
birth dates and family details.

More computer files, these from an elementary school in Virginia,
contain what a security expert called "the Holy Grail" for identity
thieves seeking to score: teachers' Social Security numbers, addresses
and phone numbers.

All of this sensitive information was discovered in an unlikely place:
on discarded computers for sale in Nigeria, a cyber-crime capital of
the world.

[...]


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