It’s a common practice for us to sell our old cellular phones. It is actually practical, why would you store it when you know for a fact that you will no longer use it? You may pass on the phone to people that you know or you may opt to sell it to a stranger. We think that it doesn’t really matter if we sell it because we assume that we will just reset/restore the original factory settings of the phone and it will automatically delete whatever data we have stored. Well, this is what I thought until I read an interesting/disturbing article. The article discussed that even if you reset your phone it is still possible to retrieve a lot of information from the cell phone.
This prospect of being able to retrieve deleted information is actually scary especially if you are the type who uses the cell phone as a storage device for sensitive information (ex. Bank account number, password etc.). The possibility that someone may actually obtain this information about you opens up a lot of possibility for abuse. For instance, a person may buy a second hand phone with the intent of obtaining this information. With such information the buyer may profit from it or he may blackmail the seller if he was able to retrieve some confidential information.
This article made me think of what remedy cell phone manufacturers are doing in order to avoid such occurrences. Are the manufacturers doing any steps to ensure that when the user reset his or her phone that all the data previously stored would really be erased? Can the manufacturers be compelled to find a solution to this? Well until such time that there is a solution to this problem I think that it is best to follow the warning/moral story in the article: “So the moral of the story is do not use the mobile phone as the repository of sensitive information that you do not want other people to have access to.”
3 comments:
If cellular phones are a risk, then perhaps even more in cases of old computers.
But then again, I would be amazed to find a person who can track and purchase an old computer, extract the relevant information and then use it to his interest. If a person can do that, then perhaps he deserves to obtain the information, and the original owner deserves to lose it to him also, because he did not dispose of his computer properly, especially if the information is that important.
hmmmn... interesting. my solution would be to mix "fake" information in my phone along with what is true. haha. it'll confuse the dumb thief and maybe get him in trouble.
but seriously, i'm glad you pointed this out. to my knowledge, its not easy to retrieve the information though, much the same as in computers.
I disagree that if people are able to retrieve the information that they are entitled to have it. Cell phone owners are led to believe that if they reset/restored the original settings that all of their data will be deleted. Therefore, they were not necessarily careless with their personal information.
However, I do agree that people need to be extra careful with sensitive information stored in their cellphones.
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