One should be very digilent about selling the smartphone to anyone as it has many layers of information stored in it. When you get a new smartphone it has so many things in it that you love , but as time passes by, you get old and you want to get rid of it. Sometimes because you get tired of using the same thing and sometimes because you simply want to upgrade. However, in any case, the phone still has plenty of life left and you want to give it to someone who can use it further and needs it. Either way, before selling it you should just clean it, so that you can make a few bucks and the other person can get benefitted as well.
However, you should never count on swiping a toggle in your setting as it does not clean your smartphone completely. This is the same with every smartphone, be it an iPhone, Android device or iPad. You should be really wise with data deletions and should not rely on a return to factory settings for your protection.
Why you should be paranoid about wiping your phone
It is important to be paranoid about wiping your smartphone otherwise you can suffer a lot. Staying vigilant is really important as it saves you from a lot of problems beforehand.
An identity theft expert Robert Siciliano did a little ex[periment with a good number of devices that he got from Craigslist. He was amazed to find out because people were not as tech savvy as they thought they were. It was interesting for him that people did not even do the cursory cleaning. He could easily access any information and was amazed to find out that “bank account information, Social Security numbers, child support documents, credit card account logins and a host of other personal data.” could easily be accessed. In this ever-evolving world of technology, this can still happen because everything has improved and there are more chances of these accidents happening today!
It’s harder than you think to securely delete cell phone data
If you think you have played your part by taking out the SIM and microSD cards then you are wrong! Simply taking out the SIM card won’t solve your problems. The internal memory of your smartphone has way too much information saved in it. You will have to clean your smartphone completely before reaching the conclusion that your smartphone is clean!
How to wipe your device
There are several things that you should do to minimize the risk of selling your smartphone. Explained below are some things that can help you wipe off your smartphone completely.
- You can back up the device before any procedure.
- There is an app that you can download in your smartphone.
- You can start with clearing the internal memory.
- Then you can follow the manual factory reset instructions.
- You can also get software that includes a SIM card lock.
- After that you can record your phone’s unique ID number for future reference.
Be vigilant about your mobile security
You are not being vigilant about your phone security if you are not taking care of your mobile phone security. In order to avoid that, you can start off by taking basic steps to protect the information on your smartphone before it gets lost or stolen. One should always remember that there is much more on the list than simply wiping your smartphone or taking the SIM card out of it.
Factory Reset
Factory reset is another good thing to do if you want your mobile phone to go back to default settings. This will solve many problems for you but remember you should perform all the backup before resetting your smartphone.
Above explained points should all be kept in mind before giving your smartphone to anyone in order to avoid any hacking problems in future. As the saying goes: prevention is better than cure. So better take all the precautions to avoid any such issue!
