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Cell Phone Users, Beware

Be careful what you do with your old cell phone when you upgrade to a new one. Even if you think you have deleted your e-mails and text messages, you haven't.

Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think.

A popular practice among sellers, resetting the phone, often means sensitive information appears to have been erased. But it can be resurrected using specialized yet inexpensive software found on the Internet.

Happily, I never caught the Crackberry addiction and don't even own one. Nor do I e-mail or text message on my cell phone. Even so, after reading this article, I'm glad I've never sold an old cell phone or computer. Better to dismantle them and destroy their innards.

Here's more from the article:

A company, Trust Digital of McLean, Va., bought 10 different phones on eBay this summer to test phone-security tools it sells for businesses. The phones all were fairly sophisticated models capable of working with corporate e-mail systems. Curious software experts at Trust Digital resurrected information on nearly all the used phones, including the racy exchanges between guarded lovers.

[hat tip Scribe]

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  • Re: Cell Phone Users, Beware (none / 0) (#1)
    by roy on Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 04:09:28 PM EST
    My people have developed a solution to this problem: the plinking range.

    Re: Cell Phone Users, Beware (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 06:49:18 PM EST
    Since I was in the middle of a divorce I did not want to renew my Cingular contract. Phones are only inexpensive if you renew. They are outrageous without. I pay the same amount each month and have the same services just no contract. Anyway I was fortunate when my phone broke and a friend up-graded and gave me her old one that I could use. Isn't there a way to erase your info so that someone else can purchase the phone inexpensively???

    Re: Cell Phone Users, Beware (none / 0) (#3)
    by scribe on Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 07:34:21 AM EST
    I was (and am) partial to the way the guy on the highway crew got rid of Vito's phone, when Tony Soprano started berating him: into the asphalt and under the steamroller.

    Re: Cell Phone Users, Beware (none / 0) (#4)
    by squeaky on Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 08:29:42 AM EST
    Soon they will not need to physically possess your phone to get all your info:
    A small security firm has made a portable computer that is capable of scanning 300 networks simultaneously. Dubbed the "Janus Project".... The computer is the brain-child of Kyle Williams from the Janus Wireless Security Research Group in Portland, Oregon. We first spotted Williams sitting quietly and sipping Mountain Dew at the recently held Defcon security convention at the Riviera Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. While it appeared as if Williams wasn't ver busy, the bright yellow Janus computer in front of him was scanning and capturing data from hundreds of wireless networks in range.
    link via robot wisdom

    Re: Cell Phone Users, Beware (none / 0) (#5)
    by BigTex on Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 04:36:36 PM EST
    Can you wipe the info by using magnets?