It can and sadly have seen it happen. Oh that's crazy. When we received government ewaste all we had to do is a DoD wipe which is about as clean as you can get a disk. At the first of the year the laws changed, any hard disk that comes for ANY company regardless of size has to be shredded. I am still a little amazed at how many people don't empty their cookies. People don't think anything of them, but don't realize what they do and what can happen.