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Cell Phones

Phones Hold Secrets

Thinking of donating or selling the old cellphones stashed in your desk? Before sending them off, be sure to permanently clear the phone’s sensitive data — which could go beyond phone numbers to include passwords, account numbers and medical information.

Commanding a cellphone to erase certain things only deletes the references to the data’s location, warns the Federal Trade Commission. You need a more thorough cleaning to remove the actual information.

Start by removing any memory cards from your phone. Then reset your phone to its factory settings; the process varies by phone but can involve changing your personal-identification number or reprogramming the phone through your computer.

Check your phone manual or call your service provider for details.

Once your phone is clean, you may be able to sell it, or donate it to a nonprofit or charity group that may refurbish or reuse it.

The Environmental Protection Agency and US Postal Services has information on recycling devices.

'Coz sharing is caring

By Swatantra Kumar

Swatantra is an engineering leader with a successful record in building, nurturing, managing, and leading a multi-disciplinary, diverse, and distributed team of engineers and managers developing and delivering solutions. Professionally, he oversees solution design-development-delivery, cloud transition, IT strategies, technical and organizational leadership, TOM, IT governance, digital transformation, Innovation, stakeholder management, management consulting, and technology vision & strategy. When he's not working, he enjoys reading about and working with new technologies, and trying to get his friends to make the move to new web trends. He has written, co-written, and published many articles in international journals, on various domains/topics including Open Source, Networks, Low-Code, Mobile Technologies, and Business Intelligence. He made a proposal for an information management system at the University level during his graduation days.

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