Library Articles of Interest

How to Clear Critical Data From Your Cell Phone Before You Get Rid of It
 jimlynch







In the U.S., we get new cell phones on average every 18 months. One of biggest risks we face is the critical data stored in our old phones that we get rid of. The good news is that it’s pretty easy to do a hard reset and clear mobile phones of personal information.
 
Used and Re-Used

The Electronics Takeback Coalition reports that we still recycle a tiny fraction (11%) of our discarded mobile devices. But the value of used smartphones and tablets is pretty high so more and more people are either selling them on the used market directly or trading in their devices to buy the newest offerings through programs like the current Best Buy trade-in promotion for Microsoft's Surface tablet. In addition, only a fraction of smartphones and tablets are as yet protected by security software, despite a rise in the amount of malware targeted at mobile devices. More and more we’ll find our mobile devices suffering from data corruption. There are plenty of good reasons to know how to reset your device and clear it of data.

Clearing your personal data from a cell phone prevents anyone else getting your call history, contacts, emails, photos, text messages, calendar appointments, and many more things. Unfortunately the process for deleting your cell phone data is different for each manufacturer and often even the specific model of cell phone. There are general guidelines to follow to wipe your personal data from your mobile device before you sell, recycle, dispose of, or donate or otherwise dispose of your mobile device. Deleting data from cell phones is very much something non-techies can do.

Deleting Mobile Data

A couple of general how-to’s I like on the topic are Preston Gralla’s ComputerWorld piece: “How to clear your data off a device”, and wikiHow’s “How to Delete Cell Phone Memory.” Preston Gralla’s piece provides the general methods used to clear Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices. It also talks a bit about clearing data from PC hard drives. The Wiki How piece is very similar but has good clear pictures. It also talks about the sensible precaution of removing the subscriber identity module (SIM) card from your cell phone, if your phone has one of those. More and more phones these days have them especially ones that use ‘GSM’ carriers like T-Mobile or AT&T. Nearly all iPhone models use SIM cards. Also SIM cards are common in prepaid phones. The SIM card stores phone numbers from your address book and text messages and other data. Your cell phone will contain a SIM card if you use a wireless carrier that uses (GSM) technology, such as T-Mobile or AT&T.
Another useful thing about SIM cards is that they can (and should) be locked with a PIN number. If the phone is stolen, the thief can’t usually get in to a locked SIM card and get the information off of it without the PIN. Removing your SIM card and keeping its PIN number recorded in a safe place are essential security precautions as well.

But What About My Specific Phone?

There are currently two free services where you can go online to find out how to do a factory reset that erases the data on your particular phone.
The Pace Butler Cell Phone Data Erase Tool is operated by the Oklahoma City based mobile phone recycling company Pace Butler. They’re one of the primary U.S. aggregator companies that buys used mobile phones or donates them to charities. Their data erase tool is a web page where you can find short videos on how to reset several different phones, the main models mostly. Or you can fill out a short form with your name, phone number, email, make and model of your phone and they’ll email you instructions for your specific phone. I tried it and they sent me the 9-step reset instruction for my LG phone within a couple minutes. I have to congratulate Pace Butler for taking up where ReCellular left off. ReCellular used to host such a free reset information service, but stopped after the company was sold.

Resetcellphone.com is another one-stop site for cellphone reset instructions. They host a form where you can search on your phone make and model (no personal info requested on this site) to get instructions. They have an extensive database with rarer manufactures like Huawei, Onida, Orion, Spice etc. They also have a request form where you can ask for instructions for even rarer handsets. I couldn’t find out anything about who runs this website or why, but it’s a great free service none-the-less.

http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/b/tsblog/archive/2013/10/21/how-to-clear-critical-data-from-your-cell-phone-before-you-get-rid-of-it.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=symantec&utm_content=theme1&utm_campaign=btcoct4