Filched PowerBook Photos Spark Sex Scandal, Trial

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Canadian-born, Hong-Kong based actor and singer Edison Chen is in court against a computer technician after explicit nude photos of him and several starlets were posted on the Internet.

Chen says some 1,300 sex pics, including about a dozen celebrities, were illegally copied from a custom pink PowerBook that he brought in for repairs in 2006.

He’s testifying in a criminal case against Sze Ho-chun, a computer technician charged with obtaining access to Chen’s computer for dishonest gain.

Chen believed he had erased the files by putting them into the trash before the machine was handed over for repairs.

“I did not know about encrypted data or securing the trash. In my opinion, when you deleted a file and put it in the trash bin, it was deleted,” he said, adding that he later found out that files deleted from the trash could be recovered in some cases.  Chen went on voluntary hiatus career after the scandal broke in early 2008, media reports that it halted careers of several of the women involved.

No matter if you have nude starlets or bad poetry or bank info on your Mac, this is about as nightmare as it gets.

To clean out an old MacBook to give to a friend recently, I tried out permanent eraser and (until the Internet proves me wrong) it seemed to do the trick…

Aside from remembering to take out the trash after binning it, what’s your preferred method of erasing data?

Via Globe & Mail, Guardian, AFP

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