Talk:Data erasure

Merge to data remanence

Background/full disclosure: See Talk:Data remanence/Archive 1#Proposed merge and Talk:Data remanence/Archive 1#Overhaul and merge

I propose merging Data erasure into Data remanence, for the same reasons I and others have merged similar articles before: They're all dealing with the same thing. Data remanence is the problem. Data erasure is a countermeasure. They are two sides of the same coin. As such, it is more useful to the reader to treat them in one article, rather than asking the reader to jump around. Causes, ramifications, and countermeasures are all part of the same whole. In particular, without a merge, both articles have to spend a lot of words on the same introductory and background material. That wastes the reader's time. Comments? Objections? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 00:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I dispute the proposal to merge the topic of data erasure with data remanence on several grounds. First, data remanence is simply the residual representation of data after removal attempts of various kinds, which may or may not involve data erasure -- a specific type of overwriting. Also, the term data remanence is a more obscure search term that would make it difficult to locate a discussion on removing data. Mlscarabiner (talk) 19:29, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Easy one first: Data erasure can be made into a redirect to data remanence (or vice versa), so searching isn't an issue. · Regarding content: This article seems to deal with quite a bit more than just a specific type of overwriting. Parts of the intro section, as well as the entire "Importance" section, are in fact mostly dealing with topics that the data remanence article addresses. We could merge just those sections and leave the remainder in isolation, but I think that would do the reader a disservice. I think it's far more useful to treat erasure in the large context of remanence, since that also covers why we care about erasure, and lets us compare and contrast different mechanisms. Do you disagree? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 23:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that it is more useful to treat data erasure in the larger context of data remanence. Data remanence occurs when data remains on an asset due to subpar data erasure methods, which is where the comparison and contrast of different mechanisms should be discussed. The term data remanence should be referenced as the resulting complication of failed data erasure.—Mlscarabiner

I am removing the merge suggestion. This is mostly because it has limited support here on the talk page. I'm also removing it because that support seems to be based on assumptions about why the reader is looking at these pages. The best way to help the reader is by assuming as little as possible about why the reader is here. If data remanence is a problem for the reader then permanent data erasure is the solution for the reader. If Wikipedia were a problem-solving manual, it would make perfect sense to discuss both topics in one article. However, we can't assume such a motive for the reader of a general-purpose encyclopedia. Related topics are not "all dealing with the same thing." Just because an editor has a problem-solution orientation, that does not mean that the reader will. Some readers will want to know how data is erased without caring about why it's done that way. Those readers will be poorly served by a redirect from "Data erasure" to "Data remanence." Other readers will only want to know about remanence. Presenting similar or even identical introductory and background content in articles about related topics is something that print encyclopedias do often. Flying Jazz (talk) 23:53, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Citation work

I unified the format of citations. Expanded raw URLs to aid future dead link recovery. Recovered four dead links (except for that difficult German one - the title would have helped here.) Converted the list of notable breaches from inline links to expanded inline citations, again to aid future dead link recovery - it had explanatory titles (which is fine), which didn't match the article title when linked, which made dead link recovery harder. --Lexein (talk) 11:12, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Lovely work. That's sort of things that I love doing so maybe we'd better be a team! :) Fleet Command (talk) 13:27, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

German BSI TL-03423 standard?

Per Shredding Methods (Protectstar.com),

"8 Cycles: German BSI / VS-ITR Standard (TL-03423) In March 2010 the German Federal office for IT Security (BSI) published a new technical BSI Guideline for "Requirements to overwrite memory media TL-03423) (Download / PDF). The method is similar to VSITR standard for magnetic storage media. In total the new algorithm has 8 cycles, which has to be worked through in chronological order. Includes one cycle of verification."

Unfortunately TL-03423 does not seem to be available from https://www.bsi.bund.de, so its contents cannot be verified, though its existence "BSI TL-03423 Anforderungen zum Überschreiben von Datenträgern" ("Requirement to overwrite memory media") is noted in BSI Forum 2010#1 (PDF) and Newsletter - Ausgabe 04/2009, 17. Dezember 2009. Oh well. --Lexein (talk) 22:10, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Sources

Academic paper:

• Paula Thomas and Theodore Tryfonas (2007) Hard drive disposal and identity fraud Springer Boston. ISBN: 978-0387723662. New Approaches for Security, Privacy and Trust in Complex Environments p. 461-466 DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-72367-9_41 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lexein (talk • contribs) 15:07, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

widespread dangerous misconception about format and delpart

We need info such as here and here in this article and disk formatting that these commands do not do not mean "erase", despite the widespread dangerous misconception.--Espoo (talk) 00:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

no reliable info about utilities allowed?

Why was this reverted? Many similar Wikipedia pages have links to reliable sources of information on relevant utilities. --Espoo (talk) 00:59, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Probably because Wikipedia is not meant to be useful but verifiable and not a list of links? And no, I'm not trolling. That's a legitimate policy (that I have some reasons to disagree with being so strict), but sadly makes people like me waste time going through pages and pages of Bing/Google/etc. results. 71.196.246.113 (talk) 03:23, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Misleading claim about recovering overwritten data

The data on Bradley Manning's PC was certainly not overwritten in the sense that it would defeat even software recovery tools. That very article linked to says this. Even if you somehow were able to recover some statistical data or sectors marked bad ('reallocated') from the overwritten cylinders, it would not likely be entire files. Even if you were a company willing to spend millions for recovery, the data recovery services would tell you that it's just lost if you somehow did several full formats and OS reinstallations over the needed data.71.196.246.113 (talk) 03:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)