A computer repair shop in Macon that bought used computers from a government auction site says the ones they were sold had personal information of city employees still in the hard drives.
A police report says BC Computer Repair in Macon bought the computers on govdeals.com in 2011.
Then, on January 5th of this year, after the computers had been sitting in storage for some time, they discovered the hard drives still had information that looked like social security numbers, pensions and other personal information of Macon Police officers.
That’s when the owners of the company handed the computers over to Bibb County deputies. Bibb Sheriff David Davis tells us he hopes this was just a careless error, and he’s glad the owners turned the computers in.
“I would say it’s an oversight I would like to hope that that’s what that was,” says Davis. “We’re just glad that there was an honest person that found them, and was able to turn them into us, so that we can find out what’s on them and also use this as a cautionary tale.”
Davis says there are about 40 hard drives that computer forensics experts are going through, to find out just how much sensitive information was left in them. He says normally when law enforcement gets rid of computers, IT professionals wipe the hard drives.
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