How to wipe personal information from cell phones and PCs

Protect yourself from identity theft

Contributing Editor, Computerworld |

Before you recycle your old computer, jail cell telephone or smart telephone, make sure that you wipe it clean of information. If you don't, your personal life could be laid bare. Worse, you lot could become a victim of identity theft.

But wiping your device clean of data may be harder than y'all call up. Here are details about how to practise it for prison cell phones and PCs.

Cleaning up cell phones and smart phones

With cell phones and smart phones like BlackBerries, you demand to worry about more than than your data -- brand sure that your business relationship has been terminated. If non, others will be able to make phone calls from your device, and you'll be footing the pecker. And so double-cheque with your carrier that the account has been terminated before you donate or sell your phone. If you've switched your account over to a new device and deactivated the old device on that business relationship, check your nib carefully to brand sure that the old phone isn't somehow still using that business relationship.

Next, erase all of your stored data, including your phone volume, any stored incoming or outgoing text messages, and memory of incoming and outgoing phone numbers, e-mails and and then on. You lot tin can do this manually, 1 by ane, of course, just if you do, there's a adept take chances you might miss some. And it can also be exceedingly time-consuming. And so cheque your telephone's manual for how to do a complete reset. A reset will wipe your phone of data and restore it to its factory settings.

A superb resource for figuring out how to reset cell telephone information is put together by ReCellular, which buys, recycles and refurbishes wireless devices. Its cell phone data eraser site gives detailed instructions on how to erase information from many unlike makes and models of cell phones. Just choose your make and model, and you'll be able to download specific instructions for resetting it.

Wiping PCs

Just deleting files isn't proficient enough when you are going to recycle your computer. Information technology's quite simple for anyone to restore those deleted files, even if they're no longer in the Recycle Bin. In fact, even deleting files and reformatting your hard disk won't completely do the trick. Someone knowledgeable enough and dedicated to the task will be able to restore your files, even from a reformatted disk.

Remember there's nothing to worry nigh? Y'all couldn't exist more wrong. In 2003, two graduate students at MIT's Laboratory for Informatics bought 158 used difficult disks on eBay and other places. From those hard disks, they were able to discover 5,000 credit bill of fare numbers, personal and corporate financial records, medical records and personal east-mails.

Only 12 of the 158 hard disks had been properly cleaned of their data. Approximately 60% of the difficult drives had been reformatted, and about 45% of the drives had no files on them (the drives couldn't even be mounted on a computer) -- yet the students were still able to recover information from them, using a variety of special tools. For details, see the news story from MIT.

What can you lot practise? Get a disk-wiping programme, preferably one that meets the U.S. Department of Defence force's standards for disk sanitation. These programs volition overwrite your unabridged hard disk with data multiple times, ensuring that the original data can't be retrieved. If you use them, be patient, considering it tin can take several hours to wipe the hard disk.

Computerworld features editor Valerie Potter vouches for the free Darik's Kick and Nuke, which, unlike some competing programs, worked smoothly on the onetime Windows 98 machine that she recently put out to pasture. Download the software, which and so creates a boot disk that wipes everything on the hard drive. Information technology tin can be used with floppy disks (remember those?), USB flash drives, CDs and DVDs. A like program that has gotten good reviews is Eraser.

If you've got a Mac, you can use Apple tree's congenital-in Disk Utility or download a third-political party awarding similar Mireth Applied science's ShredIt X 5.8 ($25, gratuitous trial), which lets you shred unmarried files also as wipe your local hard drive, network difficult drives and CD-RWs.

Everything clean? OK, now it'due south time to sell, donate or recycle your equipment. Find out what to do in "Out with the old: What to do with your unwanted tech gear."

Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld and the author of more than than 45 books, including Windows 8 Hacks (O'Reilly, 2012) and How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).

Copyright © 2007 IDG Communications, Inc.