Hard drive snafu has NBA star suing, fuming

All basketball player Bruce Bowen wanted was his hard drive fixed. What he got apparently is an invasion of privacy and a big mess.  The Smoking Gun Website says the San Antonio Spurs forward hired a Texas company to fix but instead the repair company removed the machine’s hard drive and sold the item–which contained confidential personal and financial information–to another customer. Bowen is now seeking over $2 million in damages from Computer Nerdz, the San Antonio company used  to repair his Gateway computer. According to The Smoking Gun, Bowen, who this week was named to his seventh NBA all-defensive team, a Computer Nerdz technician told them that the computer’s hard drive was damaged and could not be repaired. Since Bowen’s computer was still under warranty, he was entitled to a new hard drive from Gateway, though he was required to return the damaged item to the company. Before Bowen sent the hard drive to Gateway, Computer Nerdz  “copied all of his information onto discs for later installation onto his new hard drive,” according to a November 2006 letter from Bowen’s lawyer. The Smoking Gun says Computer Nerdz then gave Bowen back what he thought was his damaged hard drive. But three months later the athlete was contacted by Joy Roan, a Computer Nerdz customer who reported that she had bought a “new” hard drive containing personal and financial information on Bowen and his wife. Roan called Bowen after finding his home number on the hard drive, which was operational.  Ouch.Perhaps Bowen should have read how to destroy a hard drive in five seconds or looked at Data Killers  but corporations, NBA stars and regular folks need to be aware of what can be done with damaged hard drives.  Amid mounting legislation and a steady flow of horror stories — about identity theft, lost tapes, stolen credit-card data, and the unintended exposure of private data after used hard drives, cell phones and PDAs are sold on eBay — it behooves everyone  to protect sensitive or government-regulated personal information throughout its life cycle.