Nude images of a middle-aged man along with name and contact details.The risks of leaving data on secondhand USB flash drives and memory cards seems obvious, so what researchers found on some of the USB flash drives might surprise you. Americans’ USB sticks contained more business documents, while those in the UK contained more personal information. Researchers noted that the types of data found on USB flash drives varied somewhat by country. That research, carried out in conjunction with Comparitech last year, found that 65 percent of secondhand memory cards still contained personal data from their previous owners.
This study concurs with our similar study by the same university on secondhand memory cards, such as SD and microSD cards. The study notes, “In the USA, there appears to be a greater level of awareness of the issue and only one of the purchased USB memory sticks had not had any effort made to remove the data, whereas in the UK there were 19.”ĭespite Americans’ greater efforts to remove data from USB drives before selling them, the proportion of USB flash drives from which data could be recovered was almost equal in the UK and the USA at 68 percent and 67 percent, respectively. The biggest difference between the two countries was the number of drives sold without having had any attempt made to erase data beforehand.
Here’s a breakdown of the 100 cards from the US: The research team split up the results by country.
#USB SECURE MEMORY STICK SOFTWARE#
Researchers conducted their analysis using publicly available software that can be downloaded from the web. “If a person can be identified in sufficient detail (name, address, email, phone number), then this information has potential value to a criminal for identity theft.” “One of the criteria that the study applied to the recovered data was to ask ‘would this data be of value to a cybercriminal?'” says Andrew Jones from the Cyber Security Centre at the University of Hertfordshire. The data recovered from secondhand USB drives could be used for a wide range of crimes, including targeted phishing, identity theft, and extortion. Nude photos, business documents, ID scans, job applications, wage slips, private memos, tax statements, receipts, and medical documents were found among the trove of data. Within them, researchers discovered a wide range of intimate, private, and sensitive files. Two-thirds of USB drives still contained remnant data from previous users. Our latest research sought to find out how many of the USB drives still contained data, what was contained in that data, and whether any attempt had been made to remove the data. University of Hertfordshire researchers purchased 200 USB memory sticks-100 in the US, 100 in the UK-from Ebay, secondhand shops, and traditional auctions.
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