March 14, 2007
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NEWS: Copy Machines Vulnerable to ID TheftIt's tax time again – a big time of year for photocopy machines and those who operate them. Day after day between January and April, an estimated half of the American tax population use public copiers (at libraries, copy shops, and places like Kinkos and other copy stores). One might never look twice at an industrial use copier, which could conceivably spit of thousands of pages of who-knows-what on a daily basis – but think again. Little does Average Joe or Jane know, but these copiers store information on a disc drive, much like your standard home/office PC. Newer machines protect previous copy information with encryption or overwrite capabilities, but the technology is far from ubiquitous.
Obviously, this is a scary proposition, as it is far too easy to hack a standard disc drive. And never is the news direr than at tax time, when millions of Americans are dutifully copying their returns and related documents – which are an identity thief's dream come true in terms of the amount of sensitive information they contain.
With almost 60% of Americans having no idea about this vulnerability, it's only a matter of time before someone gets resourceful enough to exploit it. Sharp brand machines come with a kit to encrypt outgoing data, and Xerox has pledged to start building the safer technology into its digital machines. In the meantime, you may want to consider doing your taxes online on your own home computer, or, at the very least, copying them at the least public machine you can access.