Selling an old phone- how safe is a factory reset?

As in title really; I have several old phones in a drawer that I’d move on if I could be sure would be safe, as it were. Ive used them for all sorts of financial stuff as well as FB, whatsapp and so on. What is the best way to make them safe to sell on?

What is the best way to make them safe to sell on?

Do a factory reset.

Make sure you unlink any MFA sign ins/apps or device location bits & bobs from the device too.

Technically it may be possible to retrieve some data depending on, well, a bunch of factors. But it would be very difficult and probably very expensive, it would be beyond my means. The reality is that no-one’s going to bother with a decade-old phone that’s going to be given to their kid. If you were someone likely to be targeted by nation state actors headed up by a bald despot then I might be more nervous.

TL;DR – factory reset it, you’ll be fine.

Cheers folks 🙂

Unless you work for MI5 or MI6 I wouldn’t worry

On any phone / drive that’s encrypted then resetting it should re-set the encryption key. So while the data is still technically there they’re not recoverable.

Plenty safe enough unless you used it for international arms trading, in which case you wouldn’t sell the phone, you’d destroy it.

There’s a definite consensus forming here.

Thankfully I am not an international man of mystery, I’m just a science teacher in semi rural Carmarthenshire with too many old phones.

I’m just a science teacher in semi rural Carmarthenshire with too many old phones.

That’s exaclty the kind of thing that James bond would say…

I’m just a science teacher in semi rural Carmarthenshire with too many old phones.

“Neighbours commented on the fact he was a quiet man but his accent seemed to have a Russian twang and he always had many different mobiles in the go…”

semi rural Carmarthenshire with too many old phones.

County lines it is then

I swap my iPhone for a new one every year, that’s a phone with 1Tb of storage, I do a factory reset after swapping all the data onto the new phone, which is what O2 instructions say. Once the old phone’s reset, it behaves like a brand-new device. I send it back, and it gets sold on as a refurb. Because my phone’s always cased with a screen protector, it’s pristine with well over 90% battery life, about 97-98%, so it’s a good deal for O2.

@ avdave2

^^ lolz at the meme!

I swap my iPhone for a new one every year,

it’s a good deal for O2

Enough said.