Old Mobiles

[Banjo]

Inspired by another thread where it was said that messages are stored in the mobile phone as opposed to the SIM card.

So that must mean that if I donate my phone to charity or sell it to one of those online phone buyers like Envirophone, it is possible someone could restore some of my messages, maybe my contacts and any other information I had stored on the phone ?

I've donated quiet a few phones to charity. In future I think I'll be putting them under a hammer so to speak .....

[Size]

in the phone settings there s always one thing u can do - "restore factory data" or smthing similar. do it before u donate u ll be fine. if u forgot - they just want the gold and silver in ur old phone, not who u r. never store any of ur own nude pics on ur phone u ll be grand.

[ThomasJ]

I have a very strong suspicion of all things technical so when it comes to getting rid of old computers or phones I do literally use the “dismantle and hammer the crap out of everything approach”.

I am the same with post, letters and envelopes – they all go into the shredder and old bank cards get cut up into a million pieces.

Before I am accused of being a paranoid idiot – I don’t take chances because I have been the victim of identity fraud once before. Someone opened a bank account and got a credit card in my name – the police reckoned they had gotten hold of old post from my bins.

Caused me a lot of hassle before it was sorted and I still ended up with a bad credit rating.

[Ad Staff]

Inspired by another thread where it was said that messages are stored in the mobile phone as opposed to the SIM card.

So that must mean that if I donate my phone to charity or sell it to one of those online phone buyers like Envirophone, it is possible someone could restore some of my messages, maybe my contacts and any other information I had stored on the phone ?

I've donated quiet a few phones to charity. In future I think I'll be putting them under a hammer so to speak .....

Im sure you can set detials, messages, numbers, etc to save to sim rather than to phone.
Im not too sure about newer mobiles, not sure how to do it on my iphone
but on my old sony erricson it was easy to do.

[Banjo]

Im sure you can set detials, messages, numbers, etc to save to sim rather than to phone.
Im not too sure about newer mobiles, not sure how to do it on my iphone
but on my old sony erricson it was easy to do.

Mmm ... for complete non-techies like me (and a bit paranoid too) I thing the best piece of technical equipment I can lay my hands on and know how to use it is the hammer. Just to be sure to be sure.

[harry10]

My old phones are still used by the kids as toys.

[Ad Staff]

Mmm ... for complete non-techies like me (and a bit paranoid too) I thing the best piece of technical equipment I can lay my hands on and know how to use it is the hammer. Just to be sure to be sure.

Well you wanna be really sure, take a table saw to it, smash both pieces up, put them both in two seperate bags along with a few heavy rocks, chuck one off Brayhead and the other off the Cliffs of Moher...done deed

[sharkskin]

Inspired by another thread where it was said that messages are stored in the mobile phone as opposed to the SIM card.

So that must mean that if I donate my phone to charity or sell it to one of those online phone buyers like Envirophone, it is possible someone could restore some of my messages, maybe my contacts and any other information I had stored on the phone ?

I've donated quiet a few phones to charity. In future I think I'll be putting them under a hammer so to speak .....

Messages can be stored on the SIM or on the phone. The way that the system works allows either although there is not so much plug and play compatibility as you get when, say, plugging an mp3 player into a laptop. That means that some combinations of phone and SIM do not allow messages to be stored to the SIM.

Even it you delete the messages, a person who knows what they are doing can still read them. It matters not whether the messages are on the SIM or the phone. Even if the messages are on the SIM and they are protected by a PIN then somebody who knows what they are doing can still read them.

It just gets harder and more expensive.

So, what can you do?

1) delete all of your messages.
2) start writing new messages and saving them as drafts.
3) keep doing that until you have run out of memory.
4) delete the those drafts.

The same goes for contacts and call records, delete the old ones and then load up with new ones until you run out of memory and then delete those as well.

If you have a smart phone with multi gigs of memory then that could all take a lot of time so after you delete everything, fill the memory up with as much innocent video as you can. (I take it at least some of you guys must have access to some non-incriminating video eh?) Then repeat the process of filling up your messages etc and deleting.

Now, if somebody really wants to look at your phone, all that they will be able to recover are the deleted drafts. It is just possible that the guys in Jason Bourne land might still be able to reconstruct snippets of some messages but if they were after you they would most likely be able to look up the messages on their echelon systems anyway.

[sharkskin]

I have a very strong suspicion of all things technical so when it comes to getting rid of old computers or phones I do literally use the “dismantle and hammer the crap out of everything approach”.

I am the same with post, letters and envelopes – they all go into the shredder and old bank cards get cut up into a million pieces.

Before I am accused of being a paranoid idiot – I don’t take chances because I have been the victim of identity fraud once before. Someone opened a bank account and got a credit card in my name – the police reckoned they had gotten hold of old post from my bins.

Caused me a lot of hassle before it was sorted and I still ended up with a bad credit rating.

You are paranoid enough to be proof against amateurs but nowhere enough to be proof against the real bag guys. When East Germany fell, tons of Stasi documents were dropped into shredders. After unification the Germans developed machines into which you could dump those tons of fragments of shredded paper and have them put back together automatically.

In idle moments, I wonder what they use those machines for these days. After all, it would be a pity to let all that investment stand idle.