From ArsTechnica:

Here’s an important safety tip, courtesy of the Privacy Commissioner of Australia’s state of New South Wales: erasing data on a USB drive doesn’t mean it’s gone. Encrypting USB data is the only way to keep it safe.

RailCorp, the Sydney metropolitan commuter rail company, has stopped auctioning off unclaimed USB drives from its lost and found following an investigation by the commissioner’s office—triggered by a report in December by Paul Ducklin, the chief technology officer of computer security firm Sophos. The results of the investigation, reported on June 17 by Sophos, found the approach used by the company to “clean” the drives still left data that could be easily recovered, potentially exposing the original owners’ personal data.

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