> who do I give it to? No one, you do it yourself. Here's what works for personal devices. - Hard drives: Open them up with a screwdriver, then physically sma

> who do I give it to? No one, you do it yourself. Here's what works for personal devices. - Hard drives: Open them up with a screwdriver, then physically smash the platters with the pointy end of a hammer. The platters easily shatter into a thousand pieces, very little force required. Use a plastic bag to contain the pieces. For newer models, also smash the cache chips on the logic board. - SSDs / flash storage: disassemble the case, then smash the memory chips with a hammer. - CDs/DVDs: break them a few times, ideally use a shredder if you have one that's strong enough. Make sure the metal foil is sufficiently destroyed. - Tapes: take out the tape itself, then carefully shredder lengthwise or just burn it. - anything with batteries in it: remove the battery first. - anything with device specific cloud service accounts: delete the data and close the account if you won't be using it anymore, so it can't leak data if it gets hacked in the future. >Would ethics or liability prevent salvage operations from harvesting personal data? Physically no. Especially don't trust anybody telling you you can trust them. You have to do it yourself or at the very least watch it with your own eyes. There are commercial services that physically shredder hard drives and documents, these should let you watch so you can verify the destruction yourself.