>I like reading the news on the home page of UniversalThread, and I liked this one:
>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/07/hdd_wipe_shortcomings/
>because is an indicator on how people actually use latest technology. I enclose two paragrapghs:
>
>(...) According to Pointsec, one of the hard discs contained "highly sensitive information from one of Europe's largest financial services groups with pension plans, customer databases, financial information, payroll records, personnel details, login codes, and admin passwords for their secure Intranet site. There were 77 Microsoft Excel documents of customers email addresses, dates of birth, their home addresses, telephone numbers and other highly confidential information, which if exposed publicly could cause irrevocable damage to the company." Pointsec isn't prepared to name the careless company. (...)
>
>(..) In Sweden the first laptop Pointsec purchased at auction, contained sensitive information from a large food manufacturer. When the hard disc was analysed they found four Microsoft Access databases containing company and customer related information (...)
>
>We are arguing about distributed computing, web services, interoperability, .NET corporate advantages, ... and one realizes that a lot of data work is still done in plain Excel and Access..

IF IT was for sale on ebay, then it wasn't new, it was old.
SO ? I would argue the word 'is' here, and suggest 'was' in its place.

Not to nitpick, mind you..
OTOH - when a machine from a large organization is pulled out of service, an accepted 'policy' is to completely wipe the drive before it leaves the building. The food company obviously did not do that. Shame on them.
IF it contained customer info, then perhaps it was from their 'mobile sales force' and the tracking mechanisms were a bit lax.

I would not use your example as 'the' query for your question, however.

Regards [Bill]