With the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events set to take place shortly, demand for new smartphones, laptops or tablet PCs is set to skyrocket yet again. In consequence, many old devices are then given away, sold or disposed of – frequently without deleting the data they contain first. This could result in some unexpected and nasty surprises.
The National Cyber Security Centre NCSC recently received reports that private photos and documents had been discovered on devices which had been sold on. In one case, personal data emerged on a used laptop abroad; in another a PlayStation account continued to be used as the seller had not logged out before passing the device on.
Both these cases show, before handing any devices over to new owners, you should thoroughly delete all data. This includes the following steps:
- Before resetting the device, back up all your important files on an external hard drive or inside a secure cloud.
- Sign out from all accounts (e-mail, e-banking, app stores, social networks, cloud services) and complete delete the associated apps or programmes.
- Returning a device to its factory settings will render all data stored in its internal memory unusable. You can find the relevant menu option under your device settings.
- Don’t forget to remove all your memory and SIM cards. These could contain sensitive data and should be securely erased or destroyed if they are of no further use.
- With computers or particularly sensitive devices, it is advisable to “wipe” the hard drive, i.e. to completely overwrite it using special software.
For more information on securely deleting your data, please refer to the article "Secure deletion".
