Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Avoid Selling Your Personal Videos Along with Your Camcorder
Posted by Chris Gohlke in "CONTENT" @ 05:00 PM
"Before you create an auction on ebay for your hard disk camcorder, or post a camcorder for sale on Craigslist, you may want to verify your videos are no longer on the camcorder hard drive. If you don’t take this one crucial step, you might be sending something personal to someone you’ve never met. I came to this sudden realization after one of my auctions closed last week on ebay. I had used the delete feature of the camcorder to manually delete all but two videos from a hard disk camcorder. I was connecting the camcorder to my PC to copy the last two files to my PC hard drive when Windows Explorer revealed 22 more videos than expected on the drive. Apparently delete marks files for deletion but doesn’t actually remove them immediately from the drive. There wasn’t anything interesting on the camcorder. Some videos I’d shot for a tutorial and a couple of videos from China, but that’s not the point. I could have had video of my kid, which is not something I want a complete stranger to have. Considering the primary reason Sony’s Nightshot feature exists, it would be quite easy for someone like me to have their own Paris Hilton moment by failing to make sure the drive was clean."
Ideally, I recommend avoiding selling any media that contained personal information. When necessary, I recommend using some sort of disk wiping utility to actually overwrite all the data. If you don't want to go to that extreme, Jake has some tips on how to make sure your device is clean before turning it over to a new owner.
Ideally, I recommend avoiding selling any media that contained personal information. When necessary, I recommend using some sort of disk wiping utility to actually overwrite all the data. If you don't want to go to that extreme, Jake has some tips on how to make sure your device is clean before turning it over to a new owner.
