Even today - while not entirely practical - the cost of sending a small drive is less than $1, so in principle it remains a good idea.
However, I haven't touched a drive for as long as I can remember, and neither should you.
I received a drive today from 'Byron Finance Cloud' based on Queen St in Brisbane. Not a real company and a fake address. The drive was unassuming yellow and it had 256GB printed on the front - a great freebie if real.
Out of curiosity I stuck the thing into a clean 'protected' laptop with a middle-man tool to intercept all data. The second I stuck this thing in it started to load keystroke tools, malware, search for files, extract passwords, and perform a bunch of other nasty crap (none of which existed on this machine). All data was 'sent' to an offshore location. In my case, I wasn't online so it obviously failed, but I suspect it'd send data periodically.
The worst part? Included in the drive was a cheap AI video showing data centres with an AI voiceover, so if you didn't know what was happening in the background you'd probably think it was legit.
Next time you see a drive on your desk, find something in your office, see something on the street, get a promotion via mail, or whatever, discard it. Our natural instinct is to plug them in - a bad idea.
Sadly, this MO is becoming increasingly common as we become more savvy with traditional scam methods, and the same drive I received was sent to at least a few brokers I know of.
Be careful.
