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by alexnucci 4342 days ago
Great question. Naturally, most of the inquiries or concerns around this service are going to revolve around trust and security.

The obvious and straight forward answer is that we don't do that. The more complicated one would be that we'd break a large amount of serious laws if we were doing something like that.

When testing the service out, some users asked for further assurance . The solution that seemed to be liked the most involved a video feed (or pictures), that showed how we opened the package, removed the drive and destroyed it. That's something that I'd build down the road if I get enough requests or feel that it would move the needle in the right direction.

For now, here's what we do: receive the drive, degauss (demagnetize) it, destroy it. The customer is notified when the package arrives and when the drive is destroyed, at which point we send a certificate of destruction.

Also, we're in the process of getting our NAID AAA, eStewards, R2 and ISO 14001 certifications. The machines and processes that we use follow all of their guidelines, it's just a matter of getting approved (and paying the fees).

Let me know if you have any other ideas on how we could show/proof that we're trustworthy. Interested in listening to any suggestions.

1 comments

Might be a random dream, but could you place magnets in the box or bag it's shipped in? As in, here - start the process / rub magnets against it while shipping and then degauss it again once it gets there?
This would be pretty cool, you could probably include both magnets and those Faraday shakers tied to a coil around the drive--but I have doubts as to how strong a field you could make before the overhead of shipping a portable, "hand powered" degausser would outweigh its usefulness.
Yes! This idea had actually come up before.

I'll definitely give it an in depth look, this could make the whole process safer.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Do that, and I'll be much more comfortable with the idea of recommending your service, since it helps to alleviate the issues of things being lost/stolen during transit.
Excellent, point taken.

We're really looking at giving customers the option of doing something to the drive before it ships out. It seems that there's enough demand for it (based on comments we've gotten over the past two days).