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.)
Now people are finally waking up to the wrinkle in this plan, which should have been obvious: What do people use copiers for, anyway? 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?
The wake-up call is, surprisingly, being delivered by Sharp, a manufacturer of these devices. The company polled Americans and found that 54 percent of those surveyed had no idea that photocopiers stored digital versions of everything put on the glass.
Sharp is promoting its newer copiers, which encrypt digitally stored copies and “virtually shred” recent ones so they can’t be recovered. If you’ve got such features on your office machine, make sure you use them. But also remember that next time you make copies at Kinko’s or another copy shop, you could be leaving behind a copy of anything you reproduce.
Photo by Quasimondo.
Jaime on March 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
I’m a senior tech in kinkos.
So many people come through kinkos, that your files get overwritten on a weekly basis.
Stop being paranoid about everything!!
John on March 24th, 2007 at 9:42 am
could someone confirm what Jaime said, or doesn’t matter how many times files get overwritten, they are still useable? I may never use a public copiers again!
Nick on March 25th, 2007 at 9:01 am
John, yes Jaime is right!
Josephine Davies on April 5th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I completely agree with Jamie too