Robert Siciliano explains why selling used phones and computers is risky. A McAfee experiment found deleted data recoverable from secondhand devices. iPhones and BlackBerrys are safer than Android phones and Windows XP PCs, which should be physically destroyed rather than resold.
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Joining me now on how to delete your info for good is Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com. Robert, welcome. I thought that if I put things in the delete bin and then deleted the delete bin, I was okay, but you say no.
You really didn't think that, did you?
I sort of did, actually. I thought that—
no, no. So the delete bin is just another folder where you put your stuff temporarily until it's actually gone, uh, and even deleting it from there doesn't always delete it because it might go into a different partition. So information on a hard drive can be recovered in a number of different ways if you don't properly remove it.
Okay, well, tell us your story because you actually went out and bought some devices on the web and retrieved a lot of info. How'd you do that?
So, um, uh, with McAfee, we bought, um, 30 devices— laptops, desktops, netbooks, notebooks, iPads, iPhones, BlackBerrys, Androids. All with the intent of getting them off of Craigslist and eBay and seeing what information we could find. And on half of those devices, we found enough information to steal identities and in some situations get people in trouble because some of the information was illegal.
Wow. So how'd you do that? Could any common crook do that?
Well, yeah. The software to find the data, the forensic software, was just readily available stuff that you find online. Much of it was free. Some of the people did nothing. Stuck, you know, their data into the delete folder, into the recycle bin, and it was right there. So it was complete, you know, right in front of your face. And, you know, some of the devices were wiped, but the way they wiped it, the way they reformatted it, or the way they reinstalled the operating system didn't completely remove the data.
All right, Robert, I need brand names here. So what is safe and what is less safe? And should I just take a hammer to this stuff and— and, you know, crush it instead of, you know, trying to resell it.
Okay, so your iPhone, your iPad, great, no problem. When you factory reset those devices, we found nothing. Same thing with BlackBerry. BlackBerry is built so that when you wipe the device, everything's gone, whereas the Android, it was all there. Uh, much of it was right there in different partitions. Uh, you know, you remove the SIM card, you remove the, um— the, you know, any storage devices, but everything on the device itself was still there. Even via factory reset, we still found information. Same thing with your Microsoft Windows devices, especially Windows XP. There are so many different partitions, and the way you reinstall, reformat the drives, we found a lot of data. Windows 7 fared much better. Windows 8 was much better. But Windows XP was a big problem, and a lot of the PCs in the secondhand market right now are in fact Windows XP devices.
So should you ever put one of these products out to resell? Should you ever do that?
So let's just say you're going to sell a desktop or a laptop or any mobile phone for $50 or $100. You could potentially be selling your identity for $50 to $100. So I wouldn't. What I would do with most mobile phones, with the exception of an iPhone or a BlackBerry, is I'd destroy them. I would destroy an Android, especially an older one. I mean, I would literally destroy it, like with a hammer. Put safety glasses on and beat that thing to death. Drop it in a bucket of salt water for a year, you know, stick it under your porch. Yeah. And that's the same thing with a Windows hard drive from a laptop or a desktop. I would take it out into the shed, beat it up, drill a bunch of holes in it, and, you know, put it in a toolbox and kill it.
Some, you know, if you've got a laptop, let's face it, the whole thing doesn't have private information in it. Is there some piece that you pull out that absolutely has to be ruined?
Well, yeah, that's the hard drive.
Okay.
And it's easy. It's a couple screws. You just pop it out. Same thing with the desktop. And then you can recycle the rest of the box, or you can sell the rest of the box. And at this point, you know, any laptop that you're going to upgrade to or, you know, sell or recycle, they're not worth much. You know, they're wooden nickels. And to recycle the hardware, with the exception of the hard drive, is It's the smart thing to do.
I feel forewarned and now forearmed, and I appreciate your coming on, Robert. I've got a hammer and I've got a few things that are going to not see the light of day ever again. Great way to take out your anger and frustrations too, Robert.
