Used technology will put your business in the street. Some black people trade in and sell old cell phones as soon as the new ones hit the market. We all know somebody who loves the latest gadgets. And the market for used smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices market is booming. People are selling their old devices on eBay, Craigslist and other websites that purchase and re-sell electronics that are traded in when people upgrade. But I encourage black people to learn the facts of deleting data.
Sadly too many black people people fail to properly clean these devices of old data before sending it back to the company or selling it to a re-seller. Deleting data is vital if you plan to sell or trade in your old device.
Antivirus company Avast recently purchased 20 used Android phones from auction site eBay. The company used basic data recovery software to recover information the former owners thought were deleted files. As a result of the data taken from those phones the company was able to retrieve over 40,000 images. Including in the recovered pictures were over 1,500 family pictures of children and over a thousand more intimate pictures.
What is the one thing black people hate more than anything else? Having their business in the street! Sound familiar? Well when you sell your phone or trade it in and you don’t make damn sure its wiped clean then guess what? You business will be out there.
What business? The company recovered hundreds of emails and text messages, another thousand or so Google searches, completed loan applications and information identifying four previous owners.
Of the 20 phones purchased only one had security software installed on it. But that phone revealed the most information of all. “Hackers at Avast were able to identify the previous owner, access his Facebook page, trace his previous travels and recover the names and numbers of his contacts. What’s more, the company discovered a lot about one guy’s penchant for kink and a completed copy of a sexual harassment course, hopefully a preventative measure.”
So how can you keep your business off the street when time comes to upgrade? Let’s start with the removable SD card first.
A.) Remove SD card. Keep it. That is the only way to be 100% sure it’s contents won’t be recovered by someone else.
B.) Buy a new, cheap SD card and include that with the sale of your old device
C.) Use third-party software to make the data inaccessible the right way.
The only absolute way to be sure your business stays your busines and no one gets those intimate selfies you might have on the SD card is to just keep the card or destroy it. If the re-seller demands that you include the card as part of the deal then use the format option built into the settings of your Android phone. Another option is using a third-party app like AVG Cleaner or download an app like Secure Wipe from the Google Play store and “sanitize” your card. Read the app’s description carefully so you know exactly how thorough the wipe will be. Again, nothing is as certain as keeping the card.
You can wipe an Android phone clean easily too. Go into the settings, then the security menu and choose the option to “Encrypt device.” Wait for the phone to encrypt your data, then do the factory reset. If you’re still a little paranoid check out Google’s Play Store and download the Nuke My Device. It will sanitize your device and make it ready for sale. You could also download the Avast! Anti-Theft which will permanently delete and overwrite all the files on the device the same as Nuke My Device.
Apple iPhone and iPads are much more secure than an Android device. Basically it’s just damn difficult for anyone to get at your Apple data. Some security experts claim its simply improbable, even impossible. Data on Apple devices is encrypted by default. Every time the user accesses data on their phone it is de-crypted on the fly. To de-crypt that data, Apple uses an encryption key. The key is deleted when you wipe your iPad or iPhone, making accessing that data impossible to recover without the key or some very advanced decryption software and know how.
But its not just smartphones and tablets that need to be cleaned after you’re done with them. You should also makes sure the hard drives on your desktop and laptop computer are also wiped clean. Home computers and laptops probably contain as much as ten times the amount of sensitive data than portable devices. This includes saved resumes, tax returns, bank statements, credit card records, search history and user profiles from websites. You need to permanently delete this data.
The best way to do this is to completely reformat the hard drive. This will definitely wipe out any data that was stored on the hard drive. But make sure you completely reformat the hard drive and not just set up a partition. You could also download data destruction software. You can find a huge list at the PC Support site of About.com.
But my favorite way to wipe a hard drive clean is on the BBQ grill. After I’m done cooking I just place the hard drive directly on the hot coals and leave it there until its done. Then toss it in the trash.
Now you know.