T Minus Ten Workdays and Counting...

And it'll be my last day at ISTE. There are a lot of things I have to wrap up before I go -- transferring my knowledge and my projects to other staff, cleaning out my cubicle, returning my computer. It's the latter I've been thinking about this weekend, particularly as I take my work laptop home with me almost nightly and rely so heavily on technology in my professional and personal life. Now granted, this laptop has been blue-screening a lot lately, and before I submitted my letter of resignation had started the process of documenting my hardware struggles with IT in order to hopefully get a new one. But yeah, those struggles with IT... they give me pause and make me want to insure that I have thoroughly cleaned off this computer before handing it back to them.

Maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe they'll just re-image it immediately. Or maybe not.

So my plan, and ten things that others might keep in mind if they find themselves in a similar situation:

1. Remove Personal Files

I am pretty fastidious with my file organization, so I have already located any personal files (a copy of my resume, MP3s, photos, etc), uploaded them to Google Docs and deleted the original files from my hard drive.

2. Check (and Delete) Email

I only use my work email address for work purposes, but I did look through my email archives to see if there were any sensitive (personal) emails there. Depending on your company's email policies, you might want to delete your email. (For Outlook, locate your Outlook Data in your My Documents folder) 3. Remove Applications

Delete all applications that IT did not install on the machine. (Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs)

4. Clear Data from Your Browsers

Remove your cache, bookmarks, browsing history, add-ons, and passwords from all browsers.

Firefox: Tools > Options > Privacy/Settings Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Options > Browsing History Chrome: Customize (The Monkeywrench) > Options 5. Remove Wireless Connections

Open up your network connections and delete all wireless networks you've set up, particularly your home network. (Network Connections > WIreless Network Connection Properties)

6. Remove Passwords and Auto-Logins

Sign out of all applications and instruct them to "forget password." (Windows Messenger might be the main one to consider here for personal data, but might as well log out of all work-related applications too)

7. Unlicense

In most cases, removing programs you've downloaded will take care of this. But be sure to sever your licenses to software like iTunes. (Store > Deauthorize Computer)

8. Empty Recycle Bin 9. Defragment 10. Repeat

I am deleting things tonight. And I'll delete and refragment at least twice again before I hand this laptop back to IT. That way, all my data is scattered and (somewhat) obfuscated. Because while in all likelihood, this laptop will be shelved til someone needs a backup, I'm not certain my "friends" in IT won't have other plans...