Security Blog Warning – Office Copiers’ Hard Drives Can Leak Corporate Secrets

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun contacting copy machine makers, resellers and office-supply stores about privacy concerns over the thousands of images that can potentially be stored on the machines’ hard drives. The FTC chairman, in a letter to a U.S. Representative, said the agency has been working to alert copy-machine manufacturers and sellers of the privacy risks of the information that many copy machines store on their hard drives. The FTC is trying to “determine whether they are warning their customers about these risks ... and whether manufacturers and resellers are providing options for secure copying,” the chairman wrote in a letter released May 18 by the Representative’s office. CBS News, in a report that aired April 19, said that nearly every copy machine built since 2002 stores documents copied, scanned and e-mailed by the machines on their hard drives. The report found sensitive health and law-enforcement investigation information on copy machines ready to be resold. The Representative, in an April 29 letter to the FTC, called on the agency to investigate privacy concerns related to copy machines.