I had to take my computer in to the store for repairs. I am scared that my information will get stolen, so I copied all of my documents on to a flash drive, deleted them, then emptied the trash can. I deleted my internet history, too. All of it, passwords, cookies, etc. from forever, not just the past hour or day. I was meticulous about this.
I got the computer back today. All of the files I deleted are back on the computer. Why? How? Did the people in the computer store do it? What is going on? Am I being paranoid? I was really, really careful!
Deleting doesn’t actually delete from the harddrive. If you accidentally deleted something that shouldn’t have been deleted they may have had to restore files.
I would never trust my computer to a random store. Hard pass.
I had files with resumes, budgets, and password protected documents in there. What if they got into my password protected documents? Those were really important.
One of the password protected documents had my email passwords in it. If they got that, I might not know it right away. A computer expert could get into that.
It’s a chain store, Microcenter, so I don’t think that I can call the owner. But I should be able to contact the service manager and find out what happened. I took it there because I have a warranty with them, so they did the work for free.
For future reference (if you must have your computer repaired again), when you delete a file, even after you empty the Recycle bin, the contents of that file remain on your hard drive and can be recovered by anyone who has the right tools and a little luck.
In order to ensure that deleted information does not end up in the wrong hands, you will have to rely on special software that removes data securely and permanently. PrivaZer is one such tool - BleachBit as well.
BleachBit is a product that totally erases computer files. As a matter of fact, it’s what Hillary Clinton used to delete the emails she didn’t want anyone else to see from her computer server.
Yeah, I let my laptop rot for over three years because I was afraid they’d plant something nasty on my computer. Just this year I got well enough to bring it to some random store to see if it was salvageable or get it to boot up. THey had to do a fresh install of windows because it was completely corrupted. It’s a bit different than your situation as I hadn’t used my computer in years and every piece of info was out of date. But still was a bit worrying even at the back of my mind.
If they did a cleaning or any other process that touches a component on the computer, they may have just turned it on and then maybe restored to a few days past to make sure it was working after they used it. That is a bit suspicious to me, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask them about it. Anyway, if you feel comfortable you ought to talk to a manager. Hope everything turns out alright, but in the meantime, change your passwords is a good tip.