When companies decide they want to upgrade their equipment, which usually happens every three to five years, data storing devices are routinely destroyed in a process like the one Payne described.Companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, as well as banks, police services, and government departments, shred millions of data-storing devices each year, the Financial Times has learnt through interviews with more than 30 people who work in and around the decommissioning industry and via dozens of freedom of information requests.Last month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined Morgan Stanley $35 million for an “astonishing” failure to protect customer data, after the bank’s decommissioned servers and hard drives were sold on without being properly wiped by an inexperienced company it had contracted.While the incident stemmed from a failure to wipe the devices before selling them on, the bank now mandates that every one of its data-storing devices is destroyed—the vast majority on site.One employee at Amazon Web Services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained that the company shreds every single data-storing device once it is deemed obsolete, usually after three to five years of use: “If we let one [piece of data] slip through, we lose the trust of our customers.” Amazon declined to comment."