Man Finds Divorce Papers, Tax Docs On "New" Laptop

An anonymous reader writes "25-year-old Hidayat Sudirman found that his new laptop came loaded with more than just the usual software, it also contained 10GB of someone else's documents. From the article: "A buyer on the lookout for a new laptop got more than he bargained for at his local computer fair when the 'new' device came loaded with over 10GB of personal documents — including divorce papers and tax returns."

Bundled Software

[Stenchwarrior]

I think I saw an article a while back that IBM was going to add even more bloatware and start including "starter docs" to take the guess work out of creating day-to-day files and records. That's not personal data, those are "templates".

An IT fair in Singapore? This really concerns me!

[Anonymous Coward]

It could have been any one of us who sold their laptop to some guy who sells laptops at an IT fair in Singapore!

Let

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sudirman found it hard to believe...

[gwolf]

The divorce papers spelt his own name. That futuristic laptop, top-spec and top-notch in every possible detail, was actually a gift from the future. And after reading through some pages of the divorce settlement, he called his fiancée and cancelled the marriage.

As if by magic, the laptop was now empty. He would not be able to show the nifty features of Office 2018 to his office mates.

Re:I probably wouldn't have noticed this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do this - what you do is take your data, and make a copy of it. The second copy is your key. Then you XOR the plain text and the key together, just like a one-time-pad encryption method. This leaves you with a giant file that's all 0s. You can then compress down to almost nothing and save it to disk. The last step is to store your key somewhere. If someone gets that compressed, encrypted file, I can guarantee that as long as you keep your key safe, they won't be able to decrypt it.