/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4640105
Goodwill stores are literally under corporate orders NOT to sell computers for any number of bullshit reasons from privacy to a "recycling" agreement with Dell to supposed goodwill dot com and/or goodwill "computerworks" processing. For whatever reason here's a pic I sniped from behind the scenes of an entire gaylord full of stuff that had been donated at my local store but would never make it onto the shelves, waiting to be shipped off to god knows how far away from my local community.

>>3966087
>>3966119
Many, perhaps most Goodwills especially ones without auction cases ship all of their "computer" stuff off to Goodwill Computerworks stores, ShopGoodwill auction hubs or straight to Dell for recycling. It seems that there is some kind of big deal these days about the possibility of selling a hard drive that has someone's personal data on it like the reseller can be liable even if they have no knowledge of it. I've never actually heard of a real case of this and the idea of it alone kind of pisses me off since it absolves people of personal accountability for disposing of their own data. Software companies can mine the shit out of it with one click of an EULA but used hardware resellers can't get a binding legal waiver? Seems ridiculous but it leads to a lot of weird stuff like my favorite chain of "cash advance" pawn shops having tons of computers in the back unsellable because they're waiting on someone to "reformat" them which to them means reinstalling from their recovery partitions. It annoys me because I see PCs on their inventory app that aren't actually sellable but the flip side is that they often have "as-is make an offer" PCs that only need an OS installed because I guess they didn't have recoveries and just got reformatted. Meanwhile almost every single phone I've bought from them hasn't been (easily) factory restored and has pictures of ugly naked people on it.

At Goodwill it's much worse as I'll often see gaylords like pic related filling up with "computer" stuff waiting to be shipped off to fuck knows where - and when I buy computers from regional thrift stores I can pretty much read the former owners' emails and log into their facebook after five minutes of circumnavigating their windows passwords. Probably lucky for them they're never even slightly interesting.

>>3656261
Unfortunately those days are over. Partly because of Dell's "recycling" program partly because of new privacy laws where businesses can get sued big time for even accidentally selling people's personal data (like tax records on a hard drive) now literally everything that even looks like a computer that gets donated to most Goodwills gets shipped off to non-retards at a Goodwill Computerworks for sale there or on goodwill.com for at or near ebay prices but none of the buyer protections. I've found a "cash loans" place that also pawns that's my new primary stalking location but it's nothing close to the way goodwill was ten fifteen years ago.