By Selling Your Smartphone You're Selling Yourself


Userlevel 7
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If you plan on selling your old smart phone for some much needed cash and assume that you can click on "Erase everything" and it erases everything, you had better think again and read this.
 
By Neil J. Rubenking  07/08/2014 "What They Found
Because the data on these phones wasn't securely deleted, the researchers managed to gather a veritable mountain of personal data. They recovered over 40,000 photos, including over 1,500 photos of children, 750 racy photos of women, and 250 of "what appear to be the previous owner's manhood." Emails, contacts, Google searches—just about anything that had been on the phone was vulnerable. One phone even included a completed loan application, with all the relevant personal details."  Full Topic and Infographic 

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Userlevel 7
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Great find Jasper, I find that I usually just toss my old phone aside for the value isn't worth the trade in #1 and # 2 I can pass ito a family member ....

And now I know selling my Smartphone isn't too smart...but good to know how to wipe it clean! 🙂
Userlevel 6
This is why I secure wipe all my devices, even if they're reused by family or friends. For Android there're quite a few apps and to be really safe you could first encrypt your device and then wipe it.
 
Just for broken phones it's quite hard to erase them; sometimes a hardware/car shredder would be nice 😉
Userlevel 7
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I've been guilty of this, when exchanging phones as part of an upgrade.  I guess I should be better about wiping them from here on out!
Userlevel 7
The last phone I traded in to upgrade I wiped everything out plus....removed the chip from the phone
Userlevel 7
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Hello Antus67, that was smart! Who would think of removing the chip! LOL! 😉
Userlevel 7
Hi Sherry:
Another way around it is you can purchased blank chips...so the next time swap it with a blank which I will do next time and that solves the problem
Userlevel 7
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@Antus67 wrote:
Hi Sherry:
Another way around it is you can purchased blank chips...so the next time swap it with a blank which I will do next time and that solves the problem
Hello @  are you talking about the sim card? Not sure what blank chips you are talking about other then SD cards which I never give up anyways and now the new phones have SDs built intothem so they can't be removed!!
Userlevel 7
I have a t-mobile phone which is 3 years old....not one of the newest....the small chip (sms) in back can be removed. Also thanks for the tip on the new phones
Userlevel 6
There can be information left on your phone even after you remove the chip/sim card. The phone has memory and there can be personal info stored. Reseting your phone and wiping it clean is not difficult, people just dont think to do it and some believe everythin g is only on the sim card
Userlevel 7
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Don't fret, there is a way to make your factory reset more like a secure erasure.

by Ron Amadeo - July 9 2014
 


 
"Android has a built-in disk encryption feature that can be turned on by going to settings, security, and "encrypt phone." Since it's encrypting the entire phone (other than the SD card, which you can just keep), it will take a while to finish. After the encryption is done, then you can hit the factory reset button, and your device will be more secure than the standard factory reset. This is because even though the files are all still present, the factory reset tosses out the encryption key, and the device then has no way to decrypt and read them."
 
Full Article
Userlevel 7
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From Jaspers post:

"Android has a built-in disk encryption feature that can be turned on by going to settings, security, and "encrypt phone." Since it's encrypting the entire phone (other than the SD card, which you can just keep), it will take a while to finish. After the encryption is done, then you can hit the factory reset button, and your device will be more secure than the standard factory reset. This is because even though the files are all still present, the factory reset tosses out the encryption key, and the device then has no way to decrypt and read them."
 
 
 
 
 
Alrighty then I'm encrypting my device! I did it once to my old cell phone and I needed Verizon to help me back into my cell. I forgot my password or something so I quess encryption would be the way to go!!
 
I didn't know what I was doing and locked myself out!:@
So, am I supposed to add the avast! program to my phone? Won't Webroot do a complete wipe?
Userlevel 6
Both Avast and Webroot include a Wiping feature but if you really want to be sure that nothing can be recovered you'll have to encrypt your (android) smartphone. Without root access, which isn't available by factory, no app can fully wipe your device and because of that there will always be some recoverable data. 
 

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