Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) took a gamble to save a few dollars on IT asset disposition (ITAD) services. The result was a serious breach of the privacy requirements for some 15 million individuals and a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for $35 million.

An investigation uncovers what Dell really does with those old electronics. For many manufacturers, recycling a responsibility they've been pressured to take on and, in the case of Dell Computer, it appears to be a responsibility that it was not qualified to handle.

Last time we wrote about how Jason Linnell of the Electronics Recycling Coordination Clearinghouse said, “Lots of smaller recyclers are in over their heads, and the risk that they might abandon their stockpiles is very real.”

It hasn't even been six months and, as part of an investigation into CRT glass recycling markets, the industry publication, E-Scrap News has learned that recycling processors in several states have abandoned operations after charging CRT

What do you do when you've been undercharging for CRT monitor recycling and are stuck with a huge warehouse of monitors that cannot be processed profitably? How about just abandoning the entire thing and let taxpayers pick up the tab.

That's what happened near Fresno, Ca. when a recycling company discovered that their glass tube monitors weren't worth as much as they thought they were.

While there are many legitimate and environmentally friendly electronics recycling companies available, a recent NPR story shows us that there are also many companies that might not be as honest about what they are doing with your old electronics. More often than not these items are shipped outside the US, moving the toxic waste dump from our shores to developing countries.

While recyclers do make money selling metal

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive that stores an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold.

This past February, CBS News went to a warehouse in New Jersey to see how hard it would be to buy a

Toxic glass from old televisions and computer monitors could pollute landfills if new uses for them are not found soon, scientists warn. Cathode ray tubes, or CRTs, are made of heavy leaded glass, which is categorized as hazardous waste in Europe and most of America.

Fortunately, demand for old CRTs is high in developing nations such as China and India, where they are recycled to create the raw material for building new TVs. But as demand for flat screen TVs increases, the demand for

In 1994, Federal Prison Industries, trade-named UNICOR, started a computer and electronics recycling program in Marianna. Inmates break down and retrieve salvageable computer parts. According to UNICOR's Web site, the products are sold to public and private industries to "save precious resources."

Twenty-six plaintiffs are currently in a federal lawsuit against the prison, claiming ...

Journalism students say they paid $40 in Ghana for a second-hand hard drive that contained information about multi-million-dollar defense contracts between the Pentagon, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and one of the largest military contractors in the United States.

One of the students said the hard drive was purchased in an open-air market in the coastal town of Tema from a local dealer who bought second-hand hard drives by the cargo load.

The drive contained

After tracking hazardous waste shipments and dumping around the world, a national environmental group has sounded the alarm about a million pounds of old electronics innocently donated in Pennsylvania.

Basel Action Network contends that the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society and Allegheny County, Pa., should have known that a free electronics recycling program was too good to be true. The environmental group