Hard resets are your friend…a Gear Diary Public Service Announcement
Posted on 22 September 2009, at 9:19 pm, by Carly Z
I bought myself a new (to me) toy on eBay: a Samsung Propel Pro. It was very exciting to come home from work today and find the small FedEx box on my front steps. I ran inside, booted the phone up and started fiddling, only to notice the previous owner did not fully wipe their contacts from the device. Bad!
I googled around, figured out how to hard reset it, and now, freshly reset, I am up and running on my new toy.
But it did serve as a very good reminder: ALWAYS make sure your reset “takes” when you are selling a device. Especially on a smartphone, where you may be storing passwords, work emails, banking information, etc. I was nice and immediately made sure the phone was wiped clean. Someone else might not have been…
Has anyone else ever had this happen? Ever sell a phone/computer/iPod/etc and realize you forgot to remove something important? Ever find anything on a device you bought secondhand? Share it below!
(And yes, I emailed the seller to remind him to always properly reset in the future!)
No related posts.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:10 am
My company once purchased some used DOS-based PCs and found all of the personal info of the previous users, resumes, personal correspondence, etc. still intact. There was even several expensive software packages left, like Lotus 1-2-3, and WordPerfect.
I wiped the personal info, and kept the software. :~)
October 1st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
The title of this post is a bit ironic, as sometimes hard resets aren’t enough (e.g. Palm OS Treo models). While it takes a bit of effort that’s well beyond the average user, it’s still possible to recover data from them post-hard reset. On the other hand, there are other resets (factory or zero-out) that overwrite all data with 1s and 0s.
Takeaway: always confirm–from the manufacturer or a *verified* source–what the best approach is to wipe all data. I read an article on this about 3 years ago in the Washington Post, and the web version had a link to a guide for different models. The directions for a Treo 650 were for a hard reset rather than a factory reset–when the difference is limited and only takes a few seconds. Can we say “FAIL,” boys and girls? (I’d skip zero-out, too–Palm’s directions for that one actually talk about needing both hands and holding the stylus in your teeth!)