Are you aware that digital company machines have records of everything copied on them?

Do you have a source of this information?

What are company machines?

Yes. All copy machines have hard drives that make a digital copy and a hard copy. Most hospitals know this but other places don’t. Here is a link

@chels
Excuse my typo.
I just saw an updated report on CBS evening news.
They claim the Federal trade commission is getting involved.

I didn’t know that the copy machines stored images of documents. I hope something is done about it. I am happy that I have my own copy machine that I use for making copies whenever I need to, but that doesn’t help me when other people are copying my information (like the doctors or our insurance company). I hope they do look into these copy machines and find a way to do something to ensure that the hard drives are stripped prior to a company getting rid of them.

@Seaofclouds
CBS said, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into it.

I guess the real question is how big is the hard drive? It can only hold a finite amount of data.

They don’t do this for sneaky reasons – it’s just how they work these days.

But that does not minimize the privacy issue. In secure settings, it is common practice to remove and destroy the hard drives from any copiers or printers which leave the site.

Copiers in days of yore – scan an image onto a drum, roll the drum over paper, you get a copy.

Copiers today – the copier is a combined scanner, printer, computer. Scan to disk. Manipulate the image – enlarge/shrink/rotate/re-order pages/print double-sided/whatever…
THEN print to paper.

See link for information.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/19/eveningnews/main6412439.shtml

@ShiningToast I guess the real question is how big is the hard drive? It can only hold a finite amount of data.

For one example, here’s a US $8,000 machine, the hard drive is 80GB
HP Color LaserJet CM6030/CM6040 Multifunction Printer

I read the article yesterday. It said copiers manufactured since 2002 have hard drives that capture the images of everything copied. I see liability on the part of the company who owned/leased the copier for not erasing or removing the hard drive before they retired it.