Adrian Sutil Blackmail Plot

From Autosport.com:-

Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.

"When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk
of my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years
ago," the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.

"Somebody took this hard disk out of the computer, recognised me and he
wanted to have a little benefit out of it," added the 25-year-old.

"He asked for some money. I was a little bit shocked at the beginning,
it was a new situation but finally after four days they caught him and
now we have to see what happens."

Sutil said there was nothing on the hard drive that would have
embarrassed him if made public, other than "all my personal details,
everything".

"All my contacts, my friends, my pictures. All my life was on there,"
added the German. "You can imagine how bad it is. It doesn't matter what
is on there but it's my personal things and that's it."


--------

Erm, if it had all that stuff on it why did his Dad throw it away??

--
Emma - The Chocolate Monster
http://chocmonsterland.blog.com/

"Emma" <Emma@excalvehs.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:FQewGaAGRKJIFAjV@btconnect.com...
>
> From Autosport.com:-
>
> Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
> attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
>
> "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk of
> my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years ago,"
> the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.

When I get rid of a HD no one can use it again ;-)

In article <g02ada$qf$1@aioe.org>, gs@NOSPAM.com says...
>
> "Emma" <Emma@excalvehs.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:FQewGaAGRKJIFAjV@btconnect.com...
> >
> > From Autosport.com:-
> >
> > Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
> > attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
> >
> > "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk of
> > my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years ago,"
> > the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.
>
> When I get rid of a HD no one can use it again ;-)
>
>
There was a long thread on The Reg last week about how difficult it is
to REALLY make a disk unreadable...

Thermite seemed to be the best bet !

T.
>

"Tony Gartshore" <ditch@bogsnorkle.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.228ebf1393ca8d9a989762@news.plus.net...
> In article <g02ada$qf$1@aioe.org>, gs@NOSPAM.com says...
>>
>> "Emma" <Emma@excalvehs.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>> news:FQewGaAGRKJIFAjV@btconnect.com...
>> >
>> > From Autosport.com:-
>> >
>> > Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
>> > attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
>> >
>> > "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk
>> > of
>> > my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years
>> > ago,"
>> > the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.
>>
>> When I get rid of a HD no one can use it again ;-)
>>
>>
> There was a long thread on The Reg last week about how difficult it is
> to REALLY make a disk unreadable...
>
> Thermite seemed to be the best bet !

I don't have any thermite lying around, the last one I destroyed I took it
apart and smashed the bits ;-)

On Fri, 9 May 2008 21:06:16 +0100, Tony Gartshore
<ditch@bogsnorkle.com> wrote:

>In article <g02ada$qf$1@aioe.org>, gs@NOSPAM.com says...
>>
>> "Emma" <Emma@excalvehs.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>> news:FQewGaAGRKJIFAjV@btconnect.com...
>> >
>> > From Autosport.com:-
>> >
>> > Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
>> > attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
>> >
>> > "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk of
>> > my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years ago,"
>> > the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.
>>
>> When I get rid of a HD no one can use it again ;-)
>>
>>
>There was a long thread on The Reg last week about how difficult it is
>to REALLY make a disk unreadable...
>
>Thermite seemed to be the best bet !
>
Oxy-Acetilene does wonders to data. :)

--

Regards, Frank

Frank Adam wrote:
> On Fri, 9 May 2008 21:06:16 +0100, Tony Gartshore
> <ditch@bogsnorkle.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <g02ada$qf$1@aioe.org>, gs@NOSPAM.com says...
>>>
>>> "Emma" <Emma@excalvehs.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>>> news:FQewGaAGRKJIFAjV@btconnect.com...
>>>>
>>>> From Autosport.com:-
>>>>
>>>> Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
>>>> attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
>>>>
>>>> "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard
>>>> disk of my old computer because my father had thrown it away about
>>>> two years ago," the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.
>>>
>>> When I get rid of a HD no one can use it again ;-)
>>>
>>>
>> There was a long thread on The Reg last week about how difficult it
>> is to REALLY make a disk unreadable...
>>
>> Thermite seemed to be the best bet !
>>
> Oxy-Acetilene does wonders to data. :)

Microwave?
--
John Briggs

On May 9, 4:06 pm, Tony Gartshore <di...@bogsnorkle.com> wrote:
> In article <g02ada$q...@aioe.org>, g...@NOSPAM.com says...
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Emma" <E...@excalvehs.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> >news:FQewGaAGRKJIFAjV@btconnect.com...
>
> > > From Autosport.com:-
>
> > > Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
> > > attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
>
> > > "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk=
of
> > > my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years a=
go,"
> > > the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.
>
> > When I get rid of a HD no one can use it again ;-)
>
> There was a long thread on The Reg last week about how difficult it is
> to REALLY make a disk unreadable...
>
> Thermite seemed to be the best bet !
>
> T.
>

Recently a computer expert was able to recover 99% of the data on a
hard drive on the shuttle Columbia that burned up on reentry. The
craft was damaged by PC enviro friendly foam peeling off the external
fuel tank and damaging the shuttle on take off. The old non-PC foam
never caused a problem.

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxon=
omyName=security&articleId=9083718&taxonomyId=17&intsrc=kc_top


"Every piece of plastic on the model ST9385AG hard drive melted, he
noted, and all the electronic chips inside had burned and come loose."

"Edwards said the Seagate hard drive -- which was about eight years
old in 2003 -- featured much greater fault tolerance and durability
than current hard drives of similar capacity."

Not a huge Seagate fan most of the time but this one did it's job.

Emma wrote:
>
> From Autosport.com:-
>
> Force India driver Adrian Sutil said on Friday police had foiled an
> attempt to blackmail him after last month's Spanish Grand Prix.
>
> "When I came back from Barcelona there was a guy who had the hard disk
> of my old computer because my father had thrown it away about two years
> ago," the German told Reuters at the Turkish Grand Prix.
>
> "Somebody took this hard disk out of the computer, recognised me and he
> wanted to have a little benefit out of it," added the 25-year-old.
>
> "He asked for some money. I was a little bit shocked at the beginning,
> it was a new situation but finally after four days they caught him and
> now we have to see what happens."

Surely offering to sell his old hard drive back to him doesn't
constitute blackmail--even if the price he was asking was exorbitant.
There must have been some threat of exposure involved.

> "All my contacts, my friends, my pictures. All my life was on there,"
> added the German. "You can imagine how bad it is. It doesn't matter what
> is on there but it's my personal things and that's it."
>
> --------
>
> Erm, if it had all that stuff on it why did his Dad throw it away??

A likely scenario is that he upgraded his PC or hard disk, copied the
contents of the old drive to the new drive, and discarded the old drive.
Even if he'd deleted the files off the old drive or reformatted it, most
of them would have been recoverable. You have to overwrite the old data
pretty carefully and thoroughly to ensure that they're gone. Or give the
drive a good pounding with a sledgehammer.

-Dave

On Fri, 9 May 2008 20:21:42 +0100, Emma <Emma@excalvehs.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

>"All my contacts, my friends, my pictures. All my life was on there,"
>added the German. "You can imagine how bad it is. It doesn't matter what
>is on there but it's my personal things and that's it."
>--------
>
>Erm, if it had all that stuff on it why did his Dad throw it away??
>
Maybe Dad wanted him to be a brick layer and this was his way of
saying that Sutil threw his life away by becoming an F1 racing driver
bum.. :)

--

Regards, Frank

Well, if it had contact information, maybe the guy was threatening to
sell it? I don't know what identity theft is like in Europe, but it's
probably just as bad as in the US. Sutil probably wanted to keep his
friend's stuff private?