OT & paranoid- but please help

musman wrote on 7/3/2006, 11:22 AM

Sorry, but I didn't know where else to ask about this. I was just going to donate my old multifunction scanner/ printer/ copier/ fax machine to charity but remember somewhere being told that the scanner or copier part has some kind of memory and so you should be wary of giving them away if you used them to copy personal documents like checks, etc.
This sounds absolutely crazy to me. So, is it safe to donate this stuff?
Again, sorry for the OT thread but I didn't know where else to ask!

Comments

busterkeaton wrote on 7/3/2006, 11:36 AM

I know nothing about the technology involved here, but why don't you donate to a charity where you think they won't open up your scanner and fish out the chip and try to recover the data, particularly a place where the wouldn't know how to do that.

I would think any local church group, school, old-folks home would qualify.

Or why don't you take your a newspaper and scan that a couple a dozen times. I would guess the memory is pretty small and only remembers the most recent scan.

Coursedesign wrote on 7/3/2006, 11:42 AM

This concern is valid only for large digital copiers and large laser printers with built-in harddisks typically.

Small MFCs use the PC for all intelligence and storage.

One problem though is that most charities no longer want electronics, as they often end up having to pay for "toxic waste disposal" of the donations (it's illegal to put it in the trash in most cities/counties).

johnmeyer wrote on 7/3/2006, 2:41 PM

Give it to charity and don't worry. The story is totally without merit. There is no memory in a typical desktop scanner. Hard disks and flash memory chips are the two things you need to worry about when donating or selling, and there are simple utilities that will erase these so that even the NSA can't get stuff back (at least as far as we know ... )

Wes C. Attle wrote on 7/4/2006, 5:33 AM

I don't know if it is totally without merit. You have to be cautious these days. A couple years ago I was certain that "they" were spying on me. So I ripped open all my electronics, computers, and accessories searching for evidence of their spying devices.

Can you believe it? I found a hidden mic embedded in my circa 1979 cassette tape recorder. And I was even more shocked to find a mini-Donald Rumsfeld inside my microwave, and even a Tiny Elvis (http://www.ibiblio.org/elvis/download.html) living inside my Sony camcorder.

apit34356 wrote on 7/4/2006, 6:47 AM

This is an interesting subject. For a long time, digital printers have printed a microscopic ID tag on the document being printed, plus many HP scanners/FAX machines do have enough internal memory for upto 30 pages depending on content. Simply scan/FAX 30 pages of a big "x". Telephones numbers can be erased thru a reset procedure, then reprogram a single number X's times over the number of telephone numbers that you have. So if this charity is going to use the printer/FAX to print ramson messages or fake money or bonds, you may get a visit, but outside of those issues, it should be O.K. .

Chienworks wrote on 7/4/2006, 7:11 AM

I had the opposite problem. A local not-for-profit educational institution donated about 300 5.25" floppy disks to me. Why? I have no idea. I guess they just thought they were being nice. I didn't really have any use for them since i didnt' have any 5.25" floppy drives at home. I dug one up at work and stuck a couple of disks in just out of curiousity. Amazingly, they still contained student records, accounting records, and personnel files! The pile just sat in a box in my back hallway for a couple years. I finally took an old 68 ounce speaker magnet and tossed it in the box with them, shook it around a lot, then dropped the box off at the dump.

I wonder what the administration of that college would have thought about that data leak?

JJKizak wrote on 7/4/2006, 8:40 AM

I wouldn't worry too much as all American's complete data files are kept in a humongous NATO computer in Belgium since the 1970's. . Of course that wasn't reported as a leak yet.
JJK

Serena wrote on 7/4/2006, 9:45 PM

Really ? A mini-Donald? We see a full size Dubya peering out from our TV and I'd been fooled into thinking it was just an image!

vicmilt wrote on 7/5/2006, 7:40 AM

I feel comfortable with a friendly big brother keeping an eye on everything.

jetdv wrote on 7/5/2006, 8:00 AM

I was just going to donate my old multifunction scanner/ printer/ copier/ fax machine

My parents tried to donate some scanners and printers to Good Will. They would not take them because they said they do not accept "computer related equipment" because people will not buy them.

dand9959 wrote on 7/5/2006, 8:31 AM

That is double-plus good, Vic.