How to Wipe Your Phone Before You Sell It/Trade It In

A critical step people often forget to do when they are ready to upgrade to the newest smartphone is wiping their old phone of sensitive data. When it is time to sell, trade, or donate your old phone or tablet, you should wipe it clean of personal information to prevent identity theft and privacy breaches.

Why is Wiping Your Device of Data Important?

In the past, transferring a cell phone to a new user was easy – you removed the SIM card. Today’s smartphones should not be treated like flip phones; they are portable computers that store a ton of data. Some information stored on a smartphone or tablet includes important documents, credit card numbers, social security numbers, private trade secrets and more. Removing the SIM from a smartphone only reduces its communication ability; it does not secure your privacy.

How to Wipe Your Phone or Tablet

While using the built-in features and factory settings to delete information seems easy enough, you should double your protection by following a few additional steps:

1. Back up: Back up your data, including contacts, documents, and photos, to an external hard drive or cloud storage. This will ensure you keep important information.
2. Sign out: Log out of any accounts linked to your smartphone, including social media, Google, iCloud and more. These important steps prevent the new owner of your device from accessing your accounts.
3. Disable anti-theft: Disable anti-theft features like Find my iPhone to ensure the new owner can activate these features and add their information.
4. Encrypt your device: Encryption protects your sensitive data from being accessed by a third party. Before wiping the device, head to your device’s settings and enable encryption.
5. Factory reset: Now, it is time for a factory reset. After you have backed up your data, logged out of accounts, disabled anti-theft settings, and encrypted your device, you can now restore the phone or tablet to its original state. Doing so will delete all data from the device and restore it to its original state.
6. Verify: Following the factory reset, check to ensure all data has been deleted by searching for any personal information on the device. You can do this by checking your social media, email, and other apps.
7. SIM card: Remember to remove the SIM card.
8. ID number: Record your phone’s unique ID in case you must reference it.

Wiping a phone, tablet, and other devices before selling or trading is critical to protecting your privacy and personal information. By following the recommended steps listed above, your device will be properly wiped, your privacy will be protected, and you will be ready to sell your old phone and upgrade to a new one.

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