Many people never think of this, but your cell phone may contain a wealth of information about your friends, family and associates.

You may have:

  • Addresses and numbers for work, home and mobile
  • Birth dates
  • Even pictures of the person or their family

When you trade in that phone or throw it away, you are giving all of this sensitive information into the hands of a complete stranger. To safely give up your phone, you should wipe it first. Cita has a nice list of services that you can use to help recycle your mobile phone

You can wipe your mobile phone by following the instructions in this link here regardless of operating system.

NOTE:

  • If you do wipe your phone, all information on your phone will be destroyed. You should back it up somewhere first.
  • If you are staying with the same service provider, you should back up all your contacts to the SIM card (see your phone’s manual), then remove the card prior to wiping the phone.
  • If you are moving to a new provider you will need to backup your information in another way. Many phones have a way for you to send your data to your PC or to a PDA (IR or Bluetooth). If you can back it up like this, you may not have to enter all that info back in to your new phone.