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• The Waste Electrical and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Regulations mean that if electrical equipment including computers becomes obsolete it can be taken back to the supplier or manufacturer which has to dispose of it in an environmentally friendly fashion. See: www.berr.gov/uk/filesifile35992.pdf • It is still the responsibility of the computer's owner to wipe the hard drive before disposal of the equipment, otherwise the company could fall foul of the Data Protection Act. For more information on the Data Protection Act see www.ico.gov.uk and click on Data Protection Act.
• Disposal should be carried out by an accredited firm which will supply a complete audit trail of all the equipmentotherwise some computers could go missing at the point of collection. The disposal contractor must supply a data wiping certificate.
• The computer's hard disk should be wiped clean using a system like Blancco which removes all information on the hard drive, records what has been removed and overwrites the programme.
• It is not good enough to simply overwrite or reformat the hard drive because data can still be preserved.
• If you can identify the hard drive, a cheaper solution could be to take it out and physically destroy it by stamping on it.