Got a few old handsets kicking round the house waiting to be thrown out or sold? You might think twice after reading this story on S60 User Experience. It’s about a company that bought a bunch of phones on eBay, and then checked if they could retrieve personal information from them about the previous owners.
“Bank accounts and passwords. Business plans. Personal messages. Calenders. Contacts. And then some. Some of the devices were re-set to factory settings before they were sold second hand, as described in the user’s manual. But it was still possible to dig up the personal information.”
Cripes. So what are we supposed to do? Okay, so in most cases, the person buying your phone on eBay won’t have the technical expertise or inclination to try and dig out this kind of information if you’ve done a factory-settings reset. But still, it is worrying. Those old Nokias may have to stay in the cupboard until they’re antique enough to be flogged to a trustworthy museum…
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