What to delete from your PC when leaving a company

[miccol]

I will be leaving my company soon and prior to giving my notice I wanted to clean up my work PC. I will leave all company information on it but wanted to know what I should delete and where I should go to delete it?

Updated information - I work closely with our IT guys, they're sitting right next to me as I type this but they would go the company line. It's a small company of less than 1,000 people and nothing on my PC is backed up. They will likely keep my PC available in case they need something...what I'm not sure. Other than removing my personal stuff, clearing the cookies and favorites, what else should I remove that may show previous searches, etc. We don't archive emails (I'm very familiar with our backup procedures and archiving and this isn't one of them) so I'll probably delete any personal related emails that came to my work email. Thanks for the input so far.

[winnre]

You want to WIPE the portions of the disk containing your data, not delete. This will require some software. Do you know anyone in IT? They can pull of company information and then delete your profile.

[JDay]

Just get someone in IT to wipe the system on your last day, they'll probably have to clean it for your replacement anyway.

[Exile Machine]

My standard practice is to offload any company information to their servers, then wipe the entire disk and reformat the whole thing. To be safe I do the wiping after booting from a linux operating system CD. Let them re-image it for the next guy.

-Mark

[kapache]

Make sure to clear your Web Browser cache, and to safe your important files before doing anything with your work PC.

[Chris M]

Usually users don't have admin rights on their computers, so a true wipe may not be possible. An I.T. guy may be able to do this for you, but not always. He may not want to deal with the repercussions, should H.R. or management ask for any data.

Deleting E-mail, Internet Cache, etc...none of that really matters - it's most likely tracked and archived somewhere. At my work (I'm in I.T.) we archive every e-mail, voice mail, website visited, etc. for every user on our network. I could take a hammer and a chisel to my hard drives, and the data will not be gone.

[Ricky-Ray]

The last few company's that I worked for and currently work for as standard practice when a person leaves the company we will wipe the users hard drive and re-image it so that the next person get's the computer will be a "fresh" clean image for them to start with.

As a rule in the company that I'm at now, we will hold onto the users hard drive for 2 weeks just in case anything needs to be recovered from it. After that it goes to the duplicator so the standard computer image is loaded on there and then the computer can be redeployed to someone else or placed in storage till needed.

[Exile Machine]

Usually users don't have admin rights on their computers, so a true wipe may not be possible.

That's why I use an Ubuntu CD. Boot from the CD, you're running linux, and it doesn't care about your Windows admin rights. Tell it to wipe the hard drive and it will wipe everything without question. Clean slate.

It's the equivalent of nuking it from orbit.

-Mark

[den888]

Make sure to back-up and take with you and important e-mails and documents before you leave the company. I do a back-up on my work PC every 3-4 months, just in case there is an "unannounced layoff" - I will have some of my data, at least.

[kapache]

Usually users don't have admin rights on their computers, so a true wipe may not be possible. An I.T. guy may be able to do this for you, but not always. He may not want to deal with the repercussions, should H.R. or management ask for any data.

Deleting E-mail, Internet Cache, etc...none of that really matters - it's most likely tracked and archived somewhere. At my work (I'm in I.T.) we archive every e-mail, voice mail, website visited, etc. for every user on our network. I could take a hammer and a chisel to my hard drives, and the data will not be gone.

Most companies will reformat the machine and reload it for a new users or if its a account of a machine then the account will be deleted.

If his concern was being monitor while using the internet or using his PC, then tunneling or proxy his be the solution to his concern.

[winnre]

A good admin will disable booting from the CD, USB drive or floppy, you can only boot from the HDD installed, you cannot access the BIOS.

If you can get by any of those they deserve what they get.

[JaMail]

depends on how locked down the PC is, try booting to a ubunto cd, as someone said, if it lets you do that, just wipe the entire PC.. do it a couple of times.

[NSR500]

I delete and reimage my gear before turning them in.

[NorCalDustin]

I would suggest not wiping any free space, partitions, deleting any files, etc...

Depending on the industry, doing things like that can get the Fed's crawling up your *** even though you may not have done anything wrong.

[Chris M]

Most companies will reformat the machine and reload it for a new users or if its a account of a machine then the account will be deleted.

If his concern was being monitor while using the internet or using his PC, then tunneling or proxy his be the solution to his concern.

We usually take the hard drive out, and set it aside for a specified period of time before wiping it clean or overwriting it with a clone image. A label will go on it with identifying information, as well as the date that the drive was pulled.

In order to get the PC out to other staff, we simply throw a pre-cloned drive into the machine, and off it goes.