Robert Siciliano bought 30 used devices and found personal data on 17 of them. Deleting files isn't enough to protect your data when selling or trading in electronics. A factory reset or professional wiping service is necessary to prevent identity theft.
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Trading in your old cell phone or perhaps your laptop? Well, you want to be very careful because you don't want your data to fall into the wrong hands.
Robert Siciliano trains Americans every day on how to protect their identities through safe cybersecurity practices.
Hackers, both good and bad hackers, uh, enjoy finding raw data on the web and on devices that they purchase in the secondhand market.
He says deleting your data isn't enough. To prove that point, Robert bought 30 devices secondhand and found 17 of them had enough personal information still stored for identity theft.
We asked everybody, did you restore it back to its original condition? And even though many of them said yes, they didn't do it correctly.
WebFX estimates the average American will go through more than 40 cell phones and 35 tablets in their lifetime. Add to that the 17 desktop computers and 16 laptops, and you're looking at 600 pounds of electronics, or the weight of a full-grown grizzly bear. So how do you keep all the data stored in these devices from coming back to bite you?
Follow the instructions, you can find them online, as to how to bring that back to factory reset. If that's too complicated, find a friend or bring it to a, uh, service place that can handle it for you.
