Copy machines have hard drives? Uh-oh...

Your Local Copier:

Does it know too much?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Christopher Null has a worrying article, "Copier + Hard Drive: A Dangerous Combination," over in his Working Guy column at the Yahoo!Tech site:

It sounds like a slam dunk: Put a hard drive into a standard photocopier, so you can have a digital version of anything you run through the machine. That way, if the original is ever lost, you can always run back to the backup. (I hadn't realized this, but copiers have been including hard drives for five years now.)

But now people are finally waking up to the wrinkle in this plan, which should have been obvious: What do people use copiers for, anyway? Yes, for company flyers and employee manuals, but also for tax returns, insurance cards, photo IDs, and Social Security paperwork. Now what happens when that copier gets old and is sold on eBay? Gulp. Computerworld has more of the story.

Some of the commenters' remarks are funny. Take comment number 5, by timothykinney, who apparently thinks so little of himself that he declines to capitalize the vertical pronoun:

i photocopied my butt one time. should i be worried its going to end up on the internet?

No, Mr. Kinney, your butt will remain firmly attached, end down. Only digital materials can go onto the internet. You might have a problem, however, if you ever photocopied your fingers.

Commenter number 26, jimmyb20032003, has a bigger problem:

darn.... I made photo-copies of my plans to take over the world. Let's hope no one comes across those little snippets of info.

"Let's hope"? Include me out! I don't want you to take over the world. In fact, I'm going to devote my life to ensuring that you fail! Finally, I've got a life...

Commenter 27, lheredia1, coins a portmanteau word:

Wao that info is really screepy but according to technology nothing is impossible

But what's packed into "screepy"? Perhaps "screaming creepy"? Incidentally, since when has 'technology' ever had an opinion? Or to paraphrase Henry Kissenger, "What telephone number do you dial to reach technology?"

Commenter 40, frenchiet, asks a serious question:

Okay - I have a HP Color LaserJet 2840 all in one. I bought this about six months ago and paid nearly a grand for teh thing. Does this model indeed have a hard-drive and if so, how can this be shredded/disabled. Yes, this devise is networked and accessible via the Internet - it has it's own IP Address that HP has accessed remotely when I've called for help with troubleshooting. Thank you.

Dear frenchiet, please supply me with your printer's IP Address so that I can do the troubleshooting that you require. Nah ... just joking. You do have a serious problem, but I can indeed help you in disposing of your printer's hard drive. Open your printer and remove the hard drive. Take it outside and place it on your lawn. Run your lawnmower over it. You may have to set the mower's blades to low clearance for best effects and run the mower to and fro over the hard disk several times, but if you follow my instructions properly, your hard drive will certainly be "shredded/disabled," which is what you asked for.

Commenter 60, lesliebogdandy, confessed:

I photo copied my peanuis once!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope NO one sees that picture.

I can't even picture what a "peanuis" is. A piano? Or an organ?

Commenter 64, mat_cougher has what I assume is an oddly named body part:

Oh no, my azz is going to be seen by millions!

You wish. But is anybody morbidly curious enough to even want to find out what an 'azz' is?

Well, I could go on and on, but that would defeat the purpose of today's blog entry, which was to avoid the sort of intensive work that I did for yesterday's post.