Planning to sell your Android phone? Wait a minute, is it safe?

If you are planning to sell your Android smartphone shortly, you might as well hold on and spend 5 minutes in reading this article. Mr. Robert Siciliano, identity theft expert for security firm McAfee have come across a significant finding.

A finding which evaluates that its practically impossible to wipe off your personal data from some devices, even after you have wiped off the data using the company factory reset feature. He had bought 30 different second hand gadgets from Craiglist in order to tests security extents.

Interestingly, he was able to extract all sensitive information including bank account information, Social Security numbers, child support documents, credit card account log-ins from 15 of the devices; mostly android smartphones and windows XP computers. He bought few Blackberry and iOS devices too, but those weren’t really easy to break through.

“RIM has fantastic software,” he said. “They did a really good job of destroying data when you reset the factory settings.”-quoted Siciliano.

So, if you have a Blackberry, Windows 7 or an iPhone for that matter which you are willing to sell; there’s no security threat provided you have wiped off the data following manufacturer instructions. Backing up the data is completely at your discretion.

On the other hand, if you have an Android, you can at best refrain from selling it rather than falling prey to….that you would know better than me.

“Put it in the back of a closet, or put it in a vise and drill holes in the hard drive, or if you live in Texas take it out into a field and shoot it,” he said. “You don’t want to sell your identity for 50 bucks.”-quotes Siciliano

Via latimes