Page 7 - November_Newsletter_2020

But there's scope here for a charity campaign, which would also have a green element.

As Eben Upton points out, plenty of businesses do have old monitors just sitting around which
might otherwise end up on a dump.

There has been a major effort over recent years to try to improve the digital skills of a generation
which will find them essential when they enter the workforce.

That has seen changes to the curriculum, and thousands of after-school coding clubs have opened.
But even if the schools have reopened, most of the clubs have not, so there is a real danger that the
skills gap will grow even wider.

"The cost of solving this problem," says Mr Colligan, "is now trivial compared to the negative im-
pact it has on young people's learning."
The Pi 400 is just one small contribution to closing the digital divide, and there are other cheap

computers available.

Warning after 75,000 'deleted' files found on used USB drives

Tax returns, contracts and bank statements were among the "deleted" files recovered by investiga-
tors from used USB drives.

Cybersecurity researchers discovered about 75,000 files after buying 100 of the drives on an inter-
net auction site.

Some USB drives contained files named "passwords" and images with embedded location data.
All but two of the drives appeared empty, but the team said it had been "worryingly easy" to re-

trieve data.
The researchers used "publicly-available tools" to retrieve the sensitive information.

They said only 32 of the drives had been properly wiped.

Partial files were extracted from 26 devices and every single file was extracted from the remaining
42 USB drives.

Many of the files extracted were determined to be of "high sensitivity."

Prof Karen Renaud, from Abertay's division of cybersecurity, said the discovery was "extremely
concerning."

A spokesperson said: "An unscrupulous buyer could feasibly use recovered files to access sellers'
accounts if the passwords are still valid, or even try the passwords on the person's other accounts
given that password re-use is so widespread."
Some sellers would be unaware that they had left data on the drive, believing they had permanent-
ly deleted the information.

Software is freely available that can permanently wipe USB drives, so if you are going to sell a
device we would strongly recommend using that.