The same goes for most donated computers, or computers taken to repair shops and then left behind becasue they didnt want to pay for the repair. People are incredibly careless with their personal info, then start screaming when it gets stolen.

I bought a phone off of ebay once. It had belonged to a teen girl and had 100+ texts about her drinking and partying. Also it had 20 of the worst ringtones I've ever heard.

@fratgirl: what no pics?

I got a reconditioned phone a few years ago that still had dozens of text messages in it. I was sitting in a meeting the day after I got it and just about fell out of my chair when I found this in the outbox: "i shaved my p*ssy 4 u".

@fratgirl: No sex pics?

I'm sure the government already knew that.

@goodcow: You don't wanna know. I've bought a cellphone, and it had a lot of sex pics inside. Ugly, traumatizing party pics. And the girl that sold me her phone, wasn't embarrassed at all. When you know the seller personally, it's the worst experience ever. eBay isn't that bad.

If all else fails: Microwave it.

Securing mobile electronics, specially phones, is one of the biggest issues in Information Security right now.
I bought a Motorola RAZR on eBay last year for $15.
I was going to plug it in via USB cable to flash it with custom firmware, but before doing that I noticed he had a plain text note file saved in the phone with the routing number, and bank account numbers to both his savings and checking accounts. I was in disbelief.

@Quatre707: You overpaid.

That's even after factoring in the value of sensitive banking information.

@fratgirl:

Paris Hilton?

@Leto Versailes: I had some surprise pictures from a phone I got on ebay. It was a bad surprise :-x

So how DO you make sure the data's really gone from a phone? Is just deleting the data good enough? Or is it still easy for someone to undelete it the way it is with computer hard drives unless you use special wiping techniques?

Yes, PLEASE wipe your phone of all numbers, messages, texts, whatever.

When you recycle them, they usually get shipped in a big box full of phones and the boxes sometimes break open in a shipping facility.

That's all I'm going to say.

I've got a memory card which I got from my brother which he got from an Ebay auction, and I've got pics from the original seller. They're impossible to find on the stupid thing, there's a very specific directory path you have to follow, skipping through a dozen folders.

I remember when I recycled my last cell phone. I took the following precautions:

1) took my phone directly to the cell phone provider local office and handed it directly to a uniformed rep. I didn't take it to one of these so-called 'authorized' (3rd party) agents/providers.

2) Deleted all phone numbers, addresses, and texts. Ringtones? I figured they did me no harm if someone else got 'em, so I didn't bother deleting them.

3) Hoped/prayed that it was clean and that no one could steal any info. on me from it after it was out of my hands.

Recycling is absolutely the best idea for our environment, so I recommend it. That being said, if anyone is concerned about someone else accessing personal information from it, I recommend smashing it. Then burning the pieces. Viola!

Same thing goes for memory sticks, like someone mentioned earlier.

When I worked at Gamestop, we would have PSPs get traded in with memory cards absolutely chock-full of "adult content", often featuring the device's owner. (This was when some stores cleared these things by hand... if what I hear from some former co-workers is correct, all hard-drives and memory sticks are now shipped off to be professionally wiped... then again, porn is often set as the "screen saver".)

The point is... protect your data. If you don't know how to do it yourself, pay a reputable professional to do it (but don't just trust them implicitly either.)

Or just don't put your bank account info on your phone, maybe.

My partner bought a phone on eBay and the seller left all of his personal data on it, including the default ringtone of someone screaming (!). It scared the life out of us a few times before we figured out how to get rid of it!

Part of the problem is that there isn't an easy way for people to "easily" locate the 'Master Reset' option in alot of devices. Sometimes it's buried in the menu's and people just don't want to hassle with it unfortunately.

My previous cell has a problem with the AC adapter-to-phone connection. Nobody seems to sell an off-phone charger for the battery, which is a proprietary Samsung battery. I'd love to get enough juice to retrieve my contacts and offload some pictures, then wipe it clean, but I ran out of ideas. So the phone sits on my bookshelf, lonely and forlorn.

I recent traded phones with some guy on Craigslist. Well..I thought it was a guy. When he asked me to meet him at the park I figured hed roll up in his car. Instead a 10 year old black kid pulls up on his bike.

His ringtones included Gnarls Barkley and Blink 182. He also put a passcode on the abailaity to delete missed calls.

You little shit.

@invisiblenemies: In this economy? Yes.

@shorty63136: Which shipping company do you work for again?

@Jonbo298: Then your laziness is their gain.

And when you start complaining about your personal data being stolen, don't cry to me. A lack of thinking and preparedness on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

As the article says, there are places where you can find out how to do it yourself. You being lazy is not an excuse.

@larrymac808: Set it on fire!!

Same goes to music players.

A used iPod Video I bought two months ago at a pawn shop had the previous owner's photos - luckily the photos were nothing risque, but her taste in music was horrible.

Even the $3 Archos Jukebox I picked up last summer had the previous owner's music. I got a taste of German folk music!

A few weeks ago someone found a USB flash drive in the hallway, I looked at it to see if I could figure out who it belonged to , here's what I found :

bank account info
taxes from the past 8 years
resume with all certifications
files from a site that helps you cheat on certification tests
pictures of bodybuilders in thongs

so I emailed the guy and gave it back to him. I didn't access any of the sensitive data on it, but this shows how people can load up a device with info that could REALLY screw them up if it is lost.

@boxiom: "He also put a passcode on the abailaity to delete missed calls."

On which phone can you do something so particular? Jeez.

If you need to erase your phone but don't know how, try hammers, highways, lakes, or fireplaces.

This reminds me of the time I bought a used hard disk from eBay. After I got it, I was a bit curious about its history. Even though the drive was formatted, I was able to recover just about anything I wanted from the drive. I was able to find a tens of people's tax documents, social security numbers, bank account numbers, and a plethora of other personal information. I think the drive used to belong to a CPA or something similar.

Simply wiping a drive using format from Windows or command prompt will not erase sensitive data. It simply erases what amounts to the table of contents to the files. It doesn't take much effort to recover data from the drive.

When any drive leaves my possession because it's sold, for warranty return, or similar, at the minimum I do a zero write or low level format on the drive. If I have time, I'll do a random write followed by another zero write afterwards. This process can take a few hours to a day or more depending on the speed of the drive and your computer, but will ensure that your data cannot be easily recovered. At this point, the data is still recoverable, but unless you have have a national or foreign government spying on you, you're probably safe because the equipment and techniques used are prohibitively expensive for most individuals.

@ChibaCityCowboy:

That was very honorable of you to do. I would do the same. Honestly, even with all that information at hand, I wouldn't know what the hell to do with it.

I can tell you that on a Blackberry, the wipe function is under Options, Security. You have to hit the Blackberry for the option of "wipe" to come up. It's not obvious at all.

@IT-Chick:

Oops, hit the Blackberry Button, not hit the Blackberry, but I guess beating it could also wipe it.

@ChibaCityCowboy:

Because things like this happen, I have a flash drive with AES encryption. I don't like the way that the encrypted portion of the drive is accessed, but I guess when you secure things, you have to make some compromises. Speed of the drive was not compromised due the encryption though since it's hardware based.

@ChibaCityCowboy: I would have handed it back to him and said, "You know, I'm really killing it at the gym lately" Then flexed like a true Hulkamaniac.

i have THE story to end all stories on this one.

a few months ago, i purchased a recycled phone on ebay. i was promised it would be completely refurbished, and maybe would just have a couple of scrapes here and there, from everyday use. fine, i thought.

that's not what arrived.

instead, a full album of the previous user's photographs (84, to be exact) remained intact. two of those photographs were close ups of someone's shaved vagina. yes, really. another two were of someone's pot plants.

a few weeks later, i finally searched through the video storage on the phone... and again, jackpot: five sex videos, of my phone's owner and his lady friend. hey, at least he was seemingly monogamous.

when i complained to the company i bought the phone from, they offered to give me $15 to "make up for the distress i incurred." it never showed up.

'course, the story itself is worth way, way more than $15!

I just bought a used phone with pictures of fugly bewbs a list of website usernames and passwords

One of my friends bought a digital camera from best buy. When he got home he found photos of a bunch of people masturbating in the back room of best buy. They still had their name tags on, so it was completely obvious who they were. So he uploaded the photos to a website for all to see. He did return the camera to best buy and explained the situation and they gave him a new camera of the next model up in line.

So its not only cell phones and ipods that have this problem. Though I shudder to think whats on those PSP memory cards that people trade in to Gamestop given Gamestop's clientele. Pretty much anything that has memory storage has this problem. There have been multiple stories posted on here of children getting ipods and MP3 players from Walmart with very questionable content on them.

I wouldn't be surprised if those hard drives from ebay belonged to an office originally. I was at a job interview once where the workers were passing around their passwords out loud right in front of me and the other interviewees, they were even saying what the password was for. Not to mention the sticky notes with the passwords on them were in full view. Didn't get the job, don't think it was a place I would want to work for anyways!

That's right. The word on the street is that the very best way to dispose of information in a digital device after you are finished using it is the bottom of a lake, a deep lake.

The very best way to manage digital security while you are using it is to be very smart, update, backup, just about anything you can get your hands on.

[www.justaskgemalto.com]

@dark_inchworm: Oookay... I'd love to know what the heck kind of phone you can do that on.

Mine is weirder, though- I can put a passcode on the ability to format a memory card in it. And it won't take a memory card if it hasn't been formatted in the phone first.

@invisiblenemies: Seconded. There are better phones out there! Sharp! Fujitsu! Panasonic! NEC!

@Jonbo298: That's the nice thing about having a Sharp phone- It's easy as pie. #+power key wipes the phone.

@larrymac808: Get a "universal" charger. It clips directly to the battery contacts and it's darn cheap (I can find a USB-powered one for $5 at my local Best Buy).

@Outrun1986: How do you start that conversation that gets everyone masturbating in the back room of your job?

"OK everyone I'm sick of drinking coffee and complaining about our boss, so I'm going to masturbate right here in front of you. Whose in?"

@Janet Altman: Whaaaa? That was a total non-sequitur. And tossing it into a lake? Hello environmental damage.

It's a coincidence that this got posted now, as we're dealing with the same problem. BF just got a "new" phone from The Telephone Booth, and we're going to return it tonight, and demand a NEW phone. Sales rep claimed that it was new, but when we got home, there's all kinds of pics of girls, and inappropriate text messages. He flipped out when he saw this, considering that it's happened to us before with his previous phone, and we almost broke up that time (I didn't believe him then).
Point is, even if you've only had the phone for a week, and are returning it to the store, wipe that shit off it!!!

@Fresh-Fest-1986: It's the new Best Buy way to get the sales staff pumped. Corporate management circlejerks taken a bit too far.

@jamar0303: Its an LG VU, I tried to clear the missed calls, recieve calls, etc and it asked for a passcode.

Probably "Puberty"

@jenjen:
That would depend on how the phone stores data.

And by "special wiping techniques" do you mean overwriting the disk once? Because that's all it takes with any hard disk made in the last 2 decades.