10 Percent Of Galaxy Note 7 Owners Are Exchanging It For A Different Phone

Trading in or selling your quondam mobile device? Wipe it the right mode to reduce the hazard of personal data falling into the wrong easily.

Remember that no method apart from physically destroying the device and its storage is 100 per centum foolproof — data may still be recoverable with the right tools.

These tips are for the three principal mobile operating systems, but if you have an older phone or an alternate Os, check the transmission for full details on how to wipe your device.

Before you first:

• Support all your data, including contacts.
• Remember to remove the SIM card and whatever external storage such as a microSD card.
• Log out of services like email and social media, then articulate the data from these apps if y’all can.
• Perform a separate encryption and wipe of data on the microSD card as well if y’all don’t program to utilise the carte du jour in a new device.
• Keep the serial number of the telephone or tablet on file for your records.

Android

If the phone or tablet runs 5.0 Lollipop or later it may have Android device protection or manufacturing plant reset protection (FRP) active. This characteristic makes the phone unusable past a new owner if it’s been reset because they can’t actuate it without entering a previously used Google business relationship and password.

Y’all’ll need to deactivate FRP if yous plan to sell the device or transfer to another possessor.

Skip straight to step 4 if you lot accept a device running an earlier version of Android without FRP.

Step 1: Get-go, turn off any screen locks. Go to Settings > Security or Lock Screen Security > Screen Lock and change the type to None.

Step ii:
Remove your Google account from the device. Go to Settings > Users and Accounts, tap your account and and so remove.

Pace 3:
If you take a Samsung device, remove your Samsung account from the phone or tablet likewise.

Step 4: Now you tin wipe the device with a manufactory reset. However, this
often just clears information at the application level, and other information such every bit SMS and chat letters can be restored with some standard data recovery tools.

Here is a
full rundown on how to effectively wipe data on your Android phone
or tablet, which begins with encrypting your device get-go through the Settings menu.

You lot won’t demand any special tools, just a flake more than patience than information technology takes to simply press the restore option within the settings. Notation: devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or above may be encrypted by default.

iOS

Apple devices that support iOS 5 or later include hardware encryption when you lot fix a passcode. If y’all perform a wipe using the method below, the encryption key is also overwritten, which makes information technology very difficult for anyone who wants to recover the information.

Footstep 1:
Before starting the reset process, make sure to unpair devices like the Apple Picket
($169 at All-time Buy). Then, turn off Detect My iPhone
($155 at Amazon). For iOS 10.2 or earlier, go to Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone. Enter your Apple tree ID password if prompted. For iOS 10.3 or later, become to Settings > Your name > iCloud > Find My iPhone.

Step 2:
Turn off and sign out of other services including iMessage and the App Shop. Go to Settings > Messages > toggle the iMessage option. For your Apple ID, become to Settings > iTunes & App Shop > tap your Apple ID email address and then tap Sign Out.

For added peace of mind you may as well want to sign out individually from whatsoever other linked services and apps, such as Facebook or Twitter.

Step 3: Sign out of iCloud completely. Head to Settings > iCloud and find Sign Out at the bottom of the page. For iOS x.3 and later, Settings > Your name > Sign Out. For iOS 7 devices, cull Delete Account.

Note: if you delete all your data manually without signing out of iCloud, it will also delete the content from iCloud besides — which is something you definitely don’t want.

Stride 4:
Start the wipe process. Go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. Ostend the selection.

Stride 5:
Remove the series number of the device from your Apple account profile at appleid.apple.com.

Windows Phone

Windows Telephone only offers encryption for business customers. The easiest style to wipe a Windows Phone 7, 8 or 8.1, or Windows 10 Mobile device is to perform a mill reset and and so load dummy data to overwrite traces of the original data.

Step 1:
Open up upwards Settings > About > Reset Your Phone.

Pace two:
Confirm the activeness and then look for the phone to wipe.

Footstep 3:
Connect the phone to a PC and open up My Reckoner. If you are connecting via Mac, download the Windows Telephone app. Find the phone, which should evidence upwardly every bit a removable device, and open it.

Step four:
Load dummy data onto the phone by dragging and dropping from some other folder. Don’t use your personal photos or documents here; instead cull files that contain no identifiable metadata that could be traced back to you, such every bit video or music files. Try and fill the phone with as much dummy data as possible.

Step 5:
Reset the phone again using the same method as in stride one. Repeat the dummy data load a few more times to ensure all your original data is overwritten.

Stride 6:
Perform a final reset.

Log in to your Microsoft account at business relationship.microsoft.com/devices and notice the telephone you just wiped. Remove it from your account.

Final steps

One time the wipe is consummate, recollect to also revoke access to the phone from services such as Facebook and Google. To remove devices from your Google business relationship, head to myaccount.google.com, click on Sign-in & security > Device action & notifications and discover the model you have wiped.

Not planning to sell?

Consider destroying the device birthday to make it incredibly difficult for anyone to access residue information. David Zimmerman from LC Technology suggests drilling through the device. “Go completely through the phone in several locations, including the charging input, and and then drop information technology off at an electronics recycling receptacle,” he says.

Another method includes putting the device within a pocketbook and using a sledgehammer to break it into pieces that are no bigger than half an inch. Or for the most extreme case, “apply an industrial-strength grinder to turn the phone into dust,” he says.

Start published Nov. 26, 2014 at 11:03 a.yard. PT.

Update, Dec. 4, 2017 at five a.m.:
Revises Apple tree, Android and Windows Phone device removal data.