Another Target for Identity Theft – Photocopiers

Consumers especially corporate companies are always extra careful when it comes to identity theft issues. Proactive security measures have been taken to prevent identity theft from stealing company data or security numbers. Generally, publicized threats can range from mailbox thieves and lost laptops to the higher tech methods of email scams and corporate data invasion.

Anyway, the latest findings reveal that photocopiers could be another target for identity theft. Technically, most digital photocopiers manufactured in the past five years have disk drives– the same kind of data-storage mechanism found in computers. Identity theft will reproduce documents/data that has been scanned. This might cause the sensitive information/data from original documents to get into a syndicate criminal’s hands.

Photocopier manufacturers recommend that consumers should be more careful and take precaution while photocopying their confidential documents. Consumers should check with the photocopy shops whether they are using any security kits to encrypt or overwrite the images being scanned so that the data aren’t stored in the hard disk indefinitely.

The MX-5500 photocopier, which Sharp says is among the first to encrypt and overwrite image data stored on its hard drive.