Information

What do you hit on when you hear information risk? You immediately image that it’s computer virus. Yes! It’s one of the biggest information risks. With the dramatic advent of personal computers, people all over the world have started using computers not only as database but also communication tools. E-mails has become a very useful communication method besides telephones or traditional letters. In the prevalent usage, commuter virus is one of the threats to all of the users. As you might have been victimized the damage of computer virus already, the virus can come into your computers mostly via modems connecting telephone lines with unknown attachments. In recent years, actually, several malignant computer virus have damaged heavily e-mail users.

If you are a heavy user of e-mails or even an amateur in this field, you are surely careful about such a risk. Malignant virus will soon become recognizable like bad news travels first. Shortly after the new type of computer virus goes around the world, some innocent net users fall victim to the damage. Many of the e-mail usurers, however, make good preparations such as installing anti-virus software or having exclusive personal computers only for receiving e-mails.

The risk we have to care about is something latent rather that obvious. Of course we need to make further countermeasures against computer virus. It's sometimes more influential when unexpected risks suddenly appear. One of the computer-related risks is that individual information could be released freely to others when worn-out computers are damped in markets.

Since personal computers were downsized and cheaper, computers have become indispensable even in ordinary life, of course business. The further penetration has made a computer boom in Japan as well. Combined sales of hardware and software are, needles to say, attributable to sustaining the economy. After a certain period has passed since the boom, the used computer markers have also been established and becoming popular recently. In the circumstances of today’s information technologies, the life span of personal computers has apparently been shortened. Half a year after we buy new personal computers, the newer type of computer is thrown in the markets. If you don’t stick to new one, you can buy computers with relatively higher qualities in the used markets. Those markets are very convenient especially for foreigners who stay in Japan temporarily.

There is a risk here that personal data or secret information still remain in used computers although the old users thought that all the data was deleted. If someone abuse the information, some damages might be given. Many people today use computers as a tool of shopping though the Internet or Internet banking. When you purchase something on the web, you usually register credit numbers into frequent-clicked shopping web sites for settling accounts. Or when you use for Internet banking, bank accounts are put into the used computers. And then if your credit numbers or bank account would be open to the abusers through the used compute markets, it's easy to image what could happen next. Conversely, if you do net shopping business in Japan, you could give heavy damages to customers by releasing the personal data.

The reason why such data still remains after the seemingly perfect disposal of erasing is because there are misunderstandings in the procedures. When we want to delete data in computers, first of all, we put the data into the trash folders and make the folders empty, finally formalize. But this procedure can't delete the data. Any information put into computers is once kept on magnetic discs of the computers. We can easily search the information we want among enormous data because it's controlled by certain arrangement code. The procedure is just to delete the arrangement code. Yet the information still remains in computers. We can't functionally find it without the compass to the information we want to see. So if we use restoration software or computer professionals have it, the personal information will appear again on the screens of computers.

Since there are softwares to delete all the data in personal computers now, it's wiser to pay small money for the complete disposal to prevent a big loss. I don't make sure what would happen to you back in home countries after selling your computers in Japan.