Do you still have an old cell phone lying around or a smartphone that is actually still working fine and you want to sell it? Then don’t forget to have the data wiped really well, because before you know it, your (or the business’s) personal data will be on the street. In this article you will read some useful things about data destruction on cell phones.
The risk of a second life for your smartphone
Old cell phones and smartphones are everywhere. At the companies they are waiting and gathering dust in the drawer somewhere, and by now they have long since been replaced by many beautiful and modern ones. Now of course the old cell phones don’t take up much space, but one day they have to be cleaned up anyway.
Moreover, if smartphones are not very outdated, they can often still be sold. You have websites where you can sell them, the individual can take them to a secondhand shop and, for example, IT recycling also buys them; but only from companies.
The only question now is what about the personal data contained in the smartphone. Every smartphone contains photos, email traffic, contacts and much more. It seems obvious to me, especially when it comes to phones used for business, that one wants this data properly destroyed.
Lots of personal data on old cell phones
Now if we look left and right on websites that buy (from individuals) cell phones we see very little about how they destroy data on sent cell phones. So it is very much a question of whether any of the bought-up cell phones are cleared at all. Possibly it could just go to the next user in an unprocessed state with all the data still in it.
How this can play out proves a study by the security company Avast. Those bought 20 smartphones on ebay. After some puzzling, there emerged: more than 40,000 photos, more than 1,500 family photos of children, more than 750 women undressing, 250 photos of male genitalia, 1,000 Google searches, 750 emails and text messages, 250 contacts, the identities of four previous owners and an application for a loan.
Destroy data yourself on your smartphone or have it done?
Now there is also information on how to get the data from your old cell phone yourself. Then, of course, it has to work, and if it doesn’t, your confidential files are still in it. And it seems simple but in practice it is almost impossible to do.
By now we all know how to perform a factory reset on your smartphone, but there are programs available for download that even hobbyists can use to undo the factory reset. For example, we have the program “Recurve” , which effortlessly retrieves erased data from a phone. Also, the iPhone cannot be properly erased with a reset.
In my opinion, there is only one good software to really wipe smartphones completely sure; “Blancco.” Now Blancco is not that cheap and is actually more intended for either larger organizations that want to wipe themselves or companies that buy up phones and do take data deletion seriously. IT recyclig buys discarded smartphones and they are then wiped with Blancco.
Secure data destruction with WEEELABEX certification
My advice is to sell discarded cell phones only to serious companies that meet the WEEELABEX standard and issue a data destruction certificate. And furthermore, sending it by mail doesn’t seem very wise to me either, because mail pieces get lost. Especially if there are fun things in it. Better to hire a professional who will come and pick them up neatly and use sealed containers.
If one has high requirements for privacy because the data is very sensitive and one wants to be very sure that really everything is destroyed, then only one rigorous solution remains: namely, to have it physically destroyed on site and under the supervision of the customer. And that really needs to be done with a shredder. Then, if you want to do it right, that shredder has to make very small pieces of it because the chips that hold the data are very small.
As far as we know, only IT recycling has a mobile shredder that grinds fine enough (9mm). Too bad then you won’t get any more money for the old smartphones, but a bill instead. But you can then be absolutely sure that the confidential data really has been permanently destroyed. Something that saves a lot of money!
Want to know more? Then read more about data destruction on cell phones or contact us without obligation, we would be happy to tell you more.