Alandata has been doing data recovery for over 30 years. Within the past 6 years or so we have noticed a huge increase in schill data recovery companies and anyone with a computer claiming they do data recovery. With the advancements in technology and with so many people/companies using computers there is a huge market for data recovery. With this influx we have witnessed a vast amount of deceit, fraud, scams, anything people can do. It’s actually quite scary what some companies do with your data out there, that the customer is not aware of. So we decided to help out the public and help you protect yourself and your private personal data. We are going to discuss what to look for when finding a company, and how to identify what it is you find. If you haven’t already, please go ahead and read this article first that discusses the 4 major types of data recovery companies.
*** Any company big or small can try and scam customers and rip them off! There is an incredible amount of scrupulous recovery companies out there, and the more knowledge you have in identifying them, the safer your personal data will be.***
Finding a Data Recovery company you can trust is a lot harder than you may think. This is even more difficult when you are finding them online. Due to advancements in technology more and more people are advertising/claiming data recovery. This technology makes it easier to get jobs in, ship them out, outsource, have people in other countries dial in, etc. A website online will say anything and present themselves as any way they want because of the anonimity that surrounds it. They take advantage of that, and in turn take advantage of their customer or would be customers who pass by their site.
So how do you identify these companies, and how do you protect yourself from being tricked into a fake company? On average most customers when looking to get their data off a damaged media, usually google some form of data recovery and click on the top links. These pages are the top ranked in that search term but what’s behind this facade of a webpage? Why is it the top site? What makes them the top site? More often than not it’s because they pay to be there. Using google ads and pay per clicks. Most people come across the top site and see a bunch of data recovery sales pitches that look good to them, so they call/send off their recovery based off the presentation of the companies website. This is the biggest mistake one can do! You usually go to a website and are looking to see the answer to your problem of do they do data recovery and does their website say they can do it? Well yes of course it will say that because they want your money.
The questions you need to ask yourself when you look at the website are :
- Do they do data recovery?
- Does the content on their site make sense, is it written as a sales pitch with a lot of vague/ambiguous wording, not a lot of solid details and facts that make the company look like they know what they are really doing?
After you look through the site and decide you would like to know more, you need to do some research on the company.
- Do a google search of reviews.
- Google search the phone number that is listed on the website, is it associated with other companies, if it is then it’s probably a sales company.
- Search the company address. This is one of the most important! Does the address on google maps lead to someones house? A P.O. box? An executive suit office? Usually for about $95 a month a company can have a fake office/drop off location where the job is then shipped somewhere else.
- How many addresses/locations are the company claiming to have? A company usually has 1 location, unless they are a nationally known company such as Ontrack.
A good amount of information can be received if you call and talk to them. Be careful of salesmen, it’ll be an extension of their website sales pitch.
- Do they sound like they know what they are talking about?
- Ask to speak to a technician! If you can’t then thats not good.
- Listen to what the person says, digging deep, it’s in our lab, etc… bad signs!
- They will say anything they can to get your job in.
- Once they have the job they have leverage and will try and nickel and dime you for everything they can get.
Visit the company if you can! If you can drop the drive off locally then take advantage of it.
- So ask to drop it off, go inside and look.
- Ask them to evaluate you drive and take a look, a real data recovery expert can plug in a drive and diagnos it within minutes!
- Take a look around, do you see lots of tools, are they physically working hands on with drives?
- If all you see are computers and a bunch of sealed harddrives, that’s basically parts drives/stock piled drives and a IRU company, plug it in and it works yay they charge you more than it should be.
- Look for soldering irons, tons of specialty screw drivers, internal parts of hard drives, microscopes, clean room/booth, anyone actually working on hard drives specifically not just sitting at a computer screen, basically you’re trying to identify they personally do the work in house.
- If you see nothing then they don’t even do a single thing, it’s a executive suit just a drop off location with a universal secretary they don’t do anything.
- If you see more piles of paperwork than anything else they are basically a marketing company or deal in sales and don’t really do work.
- If they don’t let you look around, or say you can’t look we have secret technology and such they are lieing, turn around and walk away. There is a huge amount of basic tools and recovery items that all real recovery companies know about. They are basic and have no problem letting anyone see them. Private or top secret information can’t be seen by physcally just seeing a drive, and screens can be easily turned off to protect customer privacy.
- No lab would ever be off site, all work should be done in house.
- It’s a risk to have drives being carried/shipped around, if they don’t do data recovery their yet they advertise it where is your data really going?
- Don’t allow them can cause more damage, protect yourself and your data.
Here at Alandata Data Recovery we are more than happy to help you out. If you have any questions or concerns about data recovery, and need some help, please feel free to give us a call or email. We are real data recovery experts and want to maintain the integrity and quality of this field. So give us a call today for your free second opinion on your data recovery, and know it’s in the hands of someone you can trust. Never search and find the first link and then settle! Evaluations should always be free, a real data recovery expert knows it takes very few minutes to look at the drive to evaluate it, if they charge evaluation fees its because they are trying to make money or cover shipping costs to send it elsewhere.