Can magnets damage electronics? It’s a common question, or at least a common belief, especially among people over the age of 30. But the danger that household magnets pose to modern electronics is minimal and grows smaller with each passing year.
While a household magnet can theoretically damage a hard drive, it’s only under unusual circumstances, and more and more electronics are moving away from magnetic hard drives. Household magnets have no effect on computer chips. Household magnets could damage the media older computers used for storage and make CRTs act strange, but that’s where the idea came from and both of these technologies are fading from use.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
