How to Wipe Your Device Before You Sell It

21^st August '17

Tired of your phone? Want to buy a new one and replace your old gadget? Sure, go ahead, but how do you plan on wiping your data from your phones securely before you dispose it? Well here’s how you can securely wipe your device before giving it away:

Back up your data first!

Whether the phone you wish to sell off is Android, iOS, or a Windows phone, this step is the first step of securely wiping away your data. Backing up all the data present on your phone must be the very first step of disposal. The photos, contacts, documents, and settings are the most important ones to back up. Now you must remove the SIM card as well as the micro SD card. The next thing you’ve got to do is to log out of all the social media accounts along with your email inboxes. Perform additional encryption and do not forget to jot down the serial number of your device in your records.

Now, we can proceed to more specific steps in order to carry out a complete secure wipe out of the data from Android phones, iOS and windows phones respectively.

1.     Android:

Android phones are the most commonly used phones all around the world. The method of wiping away the data from these phones is not such a headache. The ultimate solution to this is performing the factory reset. Resetting your phone to factory settings can be performed on application level only, SMS and chats can be restored using standard recovery tools. However, just doing this is not the perfect solution. Here is what can be done: before restoring factory settings on your phone, make sure you encrypt the data. Sometimes the data is not fully deleted using the factory reset tool, this way a pin will be required to get access to your data. You must also cut access of your phone to your device such as Facebook, Google, etc.

2.     iOS:

The second most commonly used type of phones are the iOS phones. Here is how you can wipe away the data securely from your devices! Navigate to the settings section of your phone, go to iCloud and select Find my iPhone and turn it off. Do this for all other services. Next thing you need to do is to sign out of iCloud or delete the account if you own an iOS 7 device or higher. Now head to settings after all services, both internal and external, have been cut off (signed out or deleted). Select general and then choose the reset option and confirm the selection.

Windows Phone:

Now moving on to the Windows Phone! The sad part is that the encryption option has only been given to the business users of Windows Phones. The highly recommended method to securely wipe away the data from your phones is to perform a factory reset and after this, dummy data must be loaded to over write the original data. For this purpose, firstly navigate to the settings option and then select about and perform the reset. After the reset has been confirmed, few minutes will be taken by the phone to execute the confirmation. Connect your device to the computer then you must drag and drop dummy data, make sure no personal data is being used as the dummy data. Try to fill your phone with the maximum dummy data one can find. Disconnect your phone and then reset your phone again as discussed earlier. Carry out the resetting and loading of dummy data a couple of times to ensure complete wipe out. Remove your device from your Microsoft account.

This way you can securely wipe away data and back it up securely whether you own an Android smart phone, an iOS device or a windows phone. This is an important step before the disposal of your devices. 

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