Washington - It's getting to be the season for new phones, which means it's also the high season for selling old ones. Here are tips on how to wipe your phone, safely, before you resell:
1. Take out the SIM card. The SIM card in your phone is tied to your particular plan - so there's no reason why the next owner should want it, and hanging on to it ensures that messages sent to your old phone don't end up with someone else.
2. Have removable storage? Remove it.
Many Android phones offer users the option of using an SD card to augment the amount of storage on their phones. Before you sell or get rid of your phone, be sure to take back any storage card you've put in, to make sure that your files stay with you. Apple users don't have expandable storage options.
3. Encrypt your data before you wipe it. Or just as a general rule.
Encrypting your phone scrambles the data to make it unreadable to anyone who doesn't have the password to decrypt it. Any version of Android released in the past three years gives you the option to encrypt your data, normally through the security menu. (Different manufacturers may keep it in different spots.)
This is, in fact, the method that Google recommends for folks who want to get rid of their old phones. “If you sell or dispose of your device, we recommend you enable encryption on your device and apply a factory reset beforehand,” the company said in a statement. - Washington Post