What comes to mind first when you think of storage unit? Probably not USBs, HDDs or SSDs? According to a new information revealed by the Financial Times, technology companies destroy these storage units every year.
Moreover, they do this while they have the opportunity to recycle these units. So why do tech companies destroy millions of storage units each year? Let’s take a look at the details of the event together.
Why are tech companies destroying their storage units?
Tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google renew their storage hardware every four or five years. This includes banks, police departments and government agencies, and about tens of millions of storage devices are destroyed each year. The reason for this is actually very simple: The possibility of even a tiny bit of data leaking and the legal consequences of this.
Just last month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined Morgan Stanley, a US investment bank, $35 million for auctioning thousands of hard drives and exposing the data of millions of customers. While there is no indication that any customers have been harmed by the leak, many companies, especially those that operate cloud services, certainly do not want a similar situation.
That’s why storage units are not recycled, but instead regenerated. Some of you might think that recycling would be better for the environment, and you would be right. Unfortunately, government agencies and technology companies are focused on the legal aspect of the business, not the carbon footprint or the environment. What are you thinking? Please do not forget to share your thoughts with us in the comments.
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