If you’re planning to sell, trade in or give away your current phone, there are a number of steps you should take to prepare your phone in order to protect your personal information and secure your data and accounts.
Your cell phone holds some of your most sensitive, personal information. Things like your passwords and account numbers, emails, text messages, photos, and videos. If your phone ends up in the wrong hands, someone could steal your identity, buy stuff with your money, or hack into your email or social media accounts.
Here’s what you should do with your phone before selling, trading it in or giving it away.
Backup your data
This should always be the first thing you do and it covers your media (photos, videos, documents, etc.), contacts, messages, and call logs. Once complete, remove any extra storage devices, like an SD card. Always remember, whichever method of backup you prefer, you should aim to create more than one, be it physical or in the cloud.
Encrypt your data
Before proceeding with a factory reset, check if your phone is encrypted. If not, you can do so manually through phone settings. Encryption makes it very hard for someone else to access data on your phone after a factory reset.
Perform a factory reset
Now, when you are sure that you have made a backup of all the important files in your phone and it is encrypted, you can proceed to do a factory reset. Search for “reset” in phone settings and select “Erase all data (factory reset)”. Doing this will erase everything on your smartphone.
Remove your SIM card
To be extra safe, it’s a good idea to remove your SIM card, which may contain your phone number, security information and billing info. To remove, locate the SIM tray (usually on the right side of your device) and insert a paperclip into the hole to pop out the tray. Take out the SIM card and replace the tray.
