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From Asahi Shimbun
A man who won an Internet auction for used hard disks soon discovered that he was in the possession of confidential and sensitive government information that he had no business reading.
At first, the man, who owns an information technology company, was puzzled when he found repeated mention in the file names of Kanagawa Prefecture.
But he was in for a greater shock when he used recovery software and found that the files on the hard disks contained mountains of data compiled by the Kanagawa prefectural government.
The data included everything from individuals who were behind on their taxes and the amount; documents considering the seizure of assets; documents related to contract bid amounts; rosters of employees at public schools; and even design blueprints for electric power plants and water supply works.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:27PM (1 child)
He did not "recover" it, he simply read it. He was not a crook and even if he had not read it I don't think his shining example would stop any crooks in their tracks. And I'm a jerk too because I have bought used HDDs and reading them as received was the first thing I did, if only to check that the things worked.
In one case there was loads of personal info including photos (no pr0n, before you ask) and the guy's schedule of meds - he took pills in bucket loads. I just zeroed it.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:34AM
From the article: "he used recovery software"
Not sure in which universe that can be interpreted as "he did not recover it" (with or without quotation marks around 'recover').
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