Highly sensitive tax returns, contracts and bank statements were among 75,000 "deleted" files recovered by cybersecurity researchers as part of an Abertay University investigation into the risks of selling used USB drives over the internet. The team, from Abertay University, made the startling discovery after purchasing just 100 devices on a popular online auction site and examining them further. 98 of the USBs seemed, at face value, to be empty. However, with publicly available tools it is worryingly easy to retrieve data. Only 32 of the drives had been properly wiped. Partial files were extracted from 26 devices and every single file was extracted from the remaining 42 USB drives. Many of the files extracted were determined to be of high sensitivity, and included files named "passwords", contracts, bank statements and tax returns. Other USB drives contained images with embedded location data.
Interestingly, none of the drives held any viruses or other malware, which meant that a buyer would be perfectly safe using the purchased drives. The research, led by student James Conacher for his Masters project, found that while the risks to the sellers were high, buyers faced no risks for these specific 100 drives.
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-11-recover-deleted-pre-owned-usb.html
Interestingly, none of the drives held any viruses or other malware, which meant that a buyer would be perfectly safe using the purchased drives. The research, led by student James Conacher for his Masters project, found that while the risks to the sellers were high, buyers faced no risks for these specific 100 drives.
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-11-recover-deleted-pre-owned-usb.html
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