Wipeout

So much of our lives are stored on the phones, computers and other portable electronics which we use every day. Email, online banking, shopping, even keeping digital versions of your actual payment cards; it’s all sensitive data and it’s all hugely convenient to have at your fingertips. We also all generally switch out these devices every few years or so. You probably remember the last time you bought a new phone or laptop versus say, a new coffee maker or lamp. How critical is it then that we make sure these devices are sanitized of all that juicy information before we retire them? Can we simply delete our stuff in order to make a device eBay-safe?

Around 85 percent of U.S. adults use a smartphone and around 90 percent of us own and operate a computer. Most of that percentage will use their devices for something that we’d consider personal or sensitive, things like financial information or identifying material. Even down to family photos and memories which are deeply personal, and not for the public eye. The thing is, when we do age-out those devices, simply deleting the information isn’t always enough, due to the long and boring way that digital storage works. This information can recovered using specialized, but fairly easily available software. Time, or rather how much the device is used after the information is deleted, makes recovery more difficult. Happily, lots of device manufacturers have made it easy to ensure our old tech doesn’t become an invitation for the misuse of your data.

Your smartphone has perhaps the easiest path to a secure wipe. Both iPhones and Androids will handhold you through the procedure when you upgrade, otherwise it’s available with a few swipes in the settings menu. You’ll also be able to, with devices such as smartphones which are linked to a cloud account, wipe them remotely from another device. This is helpful in the event of accidental loss or theft. This type of wipe on a smartphone (and often tablets too) is considered to be very secure, and recovering any deleted data at all in this instance would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. It’s a similar story for other devices running a mobile-like operating system too, like streaming gadgets and smart wearables. A “hard reset” on these is safe enough to render it salable or recyclable.

Desktops and laptops, so long as they’re modern enough, also make it relatively easy to perform a cleansing. For a Mac, you’ll find it under Settings > General > Transfer or Reset, and on Windows there’s a “Reset this PC” option under “Recovery” in your settings menu. These will both give you an option to carry out a more complete wipe, suitable for when you’re sending your device to a new home. This is usually secure enough for the average user, as after all, the manufacturers know you’ll likely not keep their technology forever, so the automated “reset this device” style, built-in procedures are quite thorough. If you’re a business or deal with a large amount of very sensitive data, it can sometimes be a good idea to engage with an IT professional to discuss more secure methods of destroying this data, but these are fringe cases.

So long as we’re being mindful of removing our old data from devices we’re either going to sell, or even retire to the junk pile, it’s better than simply assuming we’re safe to do nothing. For most of us, being armed with the knowledge that these wiping procedures exist, so we can make informed decisions as to how we protect our data, can mean much less of a risk of it falling into the wrong hands.