How To Safely Dispose of Your Old Smart Phone

Everybody loves getting the latest smart phone. What to do with your old one? Perhaps, you plan to sell it on eBay or donate it to a charity. Whatever you decide, be sure to remove all sensitive data from it. Otherwise, you could create an identity theft and fraud problem for yourself.

The sensitive data on your smart phone isn't just your list of contacts and their phone numbers. The sensitive data also includes your passwords, email, browser history, calendar, and photos -- the things that document when and where you go both online and in the real world. The sensitivity of both your online passwords and browser history should be obvious. With access to your email, identity criminals could hack into your financial accounts and reset your online passwords. That would be an identity-theft disaster.

How to safely dispose of an old smart phone? Before selling or donating an old smart phone, security experts advise consumers to:

1. Remove the SIM card
2. Remove any memory cards
3. Run a factory reset to delete sensitivie data. To do this, check the (print or online) manual for your smart phone.

But that may not be enough. Accessdata, a computer forensics firm, performed an analysis last year of several popular smart phones available on the resale market. Almost all had sensitive data from the prior owners. As Dark Reading reported:

"The phones were the iPhone 3G, Sanyo 2300, HTC Wildfire, LG Optimus, and HTC Hero... Even though all of the Android phones had been wiped through a factory reset, four of the five phones also included information that would take someone with forensics tools and knowledge to extract from more hidden storage locations... Some of the details available within those four phones included user account information, Social Security numbers, geolocation tags for where the user had taken pictures using the phone, deleted text messages, and a resume. "

In this case, the only secure option is to go old-school: wrap it in cloth and then take a hammer to your old smart phone -- even the older clamshell types. Don't try to resell or donate it. Most consumers don't have access to industrial-strength hard-drive shredding services.

What did you do with your old smart phone? How did you remove any sensitive data from it? Or are your old devices gathering dust in a drawer or closet at home?

Comments

[Watsondavid483]

Of course the most of people have interest to use smart phone. But the important thing is that, if we want to resell the hand set, we have follow the process like remove Sim card or delete the all memory ,photograph is very essential. Otherwise we may face many losses.Thanks for well discussion.

[Busy Sylvia]

I think most people will forget this step: Restore Factory Settings. It is really important.Maybe there is any important information in the cache.

[chantal]

Thanks for all your explanations concerning smart phones. This getting smaller and smaller device is fulfilling more and more place in our lives insomuch it has become mandatory.

[Caitly N Simpson]

@sylvia you are indeed right, restoring it to factory setting will automatically delete all the data's you stored on it. There are some site tat buys old phones, they buy these old phones to recycle.

[KAWASAKIK GL 1800 BACK REST]

Pretty good article. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again