Wipe it, smack it, whack it

What do you do with your old worn-out cell phone?

I would advise you to think twice before selling it.

Every so often, someone will bother to check if clean is indeed clean — like when Swedish magazine Computer Sweden commissioned a security company to purchase fifty used and deleted phones of different models and makes, and then test how much information they could recreate.

About one third of the phones contained sensitive information. An example: one of the phones had belonged to a real estate agent, who had photographed IDs and signatures left behind in the phone.

Note that these phones in all cases had been rebooted, restored and emptied out. Almost all handsets have got such a function. But it just doesn’t work at a level that the consumer should be able to expect.

Deleted should always be deleted. It is as simple as that.

Sweden’s legal authorities has decided to dispose of discarded mobile phones used by their staff, and never sell them on. The security personnel simply doesn’t trust that old phones are completely clean.

This all sounds wise and cautious — but also makes for an absolute disaster from an environmental standpoint.

The only reasonable thing to do for any manufacturer is to make sure that an encryption is for real, that deleted means deleted, that an empty computer really is empty, after we have given that precise command.

But on the other hand: our rising habit of destroying functioning phones means great business for phone makers. Why should they be bothered…?

Until obvious progress is made, it is probably wise to ask two simple questions:

What is the policy for obsolete electronics at work?

And what is it at home?

When unsure: Wipe it, smack it, whack it.

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Andreas Ekström is a journalist, analyst, author and award winning keynote speaker — based in Sweden, but working all around the world. He writes on Medium most Tuesdays. (Well… some Tuesdays.) Read more here: http://www.andreasekstrom.com