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With over 16 years of combined experience, A1 DATASHRED is the most professional, cost-effective and trusted shredding company.

Ready to Clear Out Your Electronic Data? Be Sure it’s Done Securely

It’s a process we all find ourselves doing at least once every few months; taking time to clear out the old to make room for the new. This might be the case at work in your office environment or even at home when you notice that clutter is becoming a problem and you seem to be dealing with more mess than ever. In the event this inevitable time arrives, it’s the best time to sort through old belongings and either toss or donate what you no longer need.

If you’ve been holding onto old cell phones, laptops, or hard drives, you’re not alone. We as a society are constantly upgrading devices in an effort to obtain the latest and greatest on the market; sure this is not a bad thing, but what could be considered bad is the way in which you are dealing with the old, no longer relevant electronics you’ve been storing up until now. Unfortunately, many individuals will simply toss these devices in the recycling or garbage bin, rather than taking them to an electronics recycling company or destruction company. What does this mean? These items will consequently make their way to your local landfill, polluting our environment and potentially harming our wildlife as well.

Not only does this leave our environment at substantial risk when this this takes place, it also leaves your confidential data vulnerable to exposure if stolen; that’s because unless you have your hard drives and other electronic media destroyed by a professional, software used by hackers can be used to recover that data you thought you successfully “erased”. The best way to alleviate both risks is through hiring a professional electronic destruction service.

Environmental Threats

You’re likely familiar with the fact that electronics can pose danger to the environment, but do you know just why they have such a negative impact? The many components of electronic devices are made with a substantial amount of hazardous materials. Heavy metals and airborne dioxins will eventually enter our water supplies, roadside dust, and the general air when electronics are disposed of in our landfill and left to decay. These harmful toxins hurt our environment and worse, if or when ingested through water and air, their effects on humans are carcinogenic.

Standard hazardous components found in most electronics include:

Lead
Mercury
Beryllium Oxide
Cadmium
Brominated Flame Retardants

Review this interesting report for a more in depth breakdown.

Data Breach Risks

Information theft is an ever-growing crime, and often it’s carried out with no warning or signs until the damage has already been done. This is a large drawback of carelessly disposing of electronics improperly and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

As mentioned, many are under the belief that deleting data is enough to wipe all documented information; unfortunately, this idea is very much untrue. Data recovery software and methods are more than capable of retrieving information from electronics.

Due to the nature in which data is created and stored on a hard drive, deleting a file or program doesn’t truly remove it from the system. When you save a file, space is allocated in the hard drive and a directory is created at that time to its location. Deleting a file simply eliminates the directory listing and lists the space as available for something else to be saved over it. In this way old data will eventually be replaced with something new, but there are no guarantees that it’ll be unrecoverable. As you can see, just because you’ve hit delete, you aren’t really safe from all the risks of data theft.

The Safest Solution for Your Electronic Data

The best approach to ensure your data can’t be recovered, while also ensuring the environment is safe, is physically destroying your electronic devices. Partnering with a company, like A1 DATASHRED, that provides reliable hard drive destruction services is your best bet.

Media destruction services provided by our professionals will take your old electronic media and destroy them in minutes on-site, at your location. Our industrial shred equipment is built to shred through paper and all your electronic devices. Once the process is completed, the particles are sent to be recycled, the raw material is then removed and reused in new products. This not only keeps electronics away from our landfills but also ensures your sensitive data is never exposed!

A1 DATASHRED is a document destruction provider also offering media destruction services, for a more convenient and practical service approach. We are proud to keep residents and businesses in Boston protected from information theft, while doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint.

If you are looking for safe media disposal solutions, contact us today. We are more than happy to assist you!

August 28, 2019