Security of Selling Your Phone for Refurbishment: Is Your Information Accessible and How to Delete It

As far as security in selling your phone for refurbishment goes there is good news.  If you take some necessary steps, you can have confidence that your private information will not be accessible to others.  In other words, you can definitely delete your private information.

Regardless of the mobile phone that you have, you need to remove the SIM card.  Call logs and contacts may be retained on the SIM card.  Next, remove your micro SD card.  If you absolutely have to keep the SD card with the mobile device, you will want to erase and reformat the card.  You can usually do the wipe via the Settings app.

Once you have taken care of the SIM card and the micro SD card, you will still need to wipe the mobile device’s internal storage.  Android and iOS systems have slightly different ways to delete any personal information that is left.

iOS systems that are older have a built-in option that securely erases your phone.  Just go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings.  On new models, Apple uses an encryption system.  What this does is leave anything left on your phone an unintelligible mess that cannot be deciphered.

For Android phones, you basically have two options for completely wiping the operating system.  First, you can do a factory reset which for most people is enough to wipe away any accessible data.  However, if you want to go further, you can encrypt your Android device which will do a complete overwrite on the system.

The Computer Market is a well-known online marketplace for buying used IT equipment. The Computer Market and partners have offices and resources across Australia.  Our business is built on giving customers a quality product that will meet their needs and their budgets, backed up by professionalism, technical knowledge and post-sales support, as well as a system of comprehensive warranties and money back guarantees. We are now recognised as one of the most respected businesses in the specialty of refurbishing and re-selling computer systems. Get in touch with us if you want to find out more about cloud services and the benefits that they can offer you.