Selling your old laptop or phone? You might be handing over your data too(theconversation.com)
28 pointsby devonnull9 days ago6 comments
  • southernplaces79 days ago
    At least if we're talking about laptops, it should be an obvious basic step to completely wipe your drive with multiple passes, though this is a slow job.

    Even easier, just encrypt the whole disk and then "lose" the decryption key. Now it's safe for sale since other's can reformat it despite the encryption that essentially made your data completely irretrievable.

    Less expert with phones, but at the very least format one before selling.

    Edit: having now read the article, encryption is exactly what they recommend for laptops. Excellent.

    • giancarlostoro9 days ago
      Or just sell without the hard drive.
      • simondanerd9 days ago
        I second this, cheap SSDs are in the $35-40 range and won't contain your data, easy enough to swap out.

        Whenever I buy pre built devices I usually swap out the drives for something more premium as the manufacturer probably was optimizing for cost.

      • southernplaces78 days ago
        Fair enough, but you'll get a lot less if the laptop has no drive, so you could do as the other comment here notes, which is replace it with a cheap drive. However, I emphasize that if you don't want to do that or are short enough on cash that you can't even buy a replacement drive (it happens), encrypting the whole drive with a free tool like veracrypt or bitlocker is absolutely as secure for protecting residual data. Nobody who buys that shit is going to break through 256 bit AES for your favorite nude photos and love notes!
  • prirun8 days ago
    I boot Finnix and use dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx to wipe out drives. Most drives can be wiped out overnight. That fable about needing multiple passes is not true:

    https://datarecovery.com/rd/why-does-it-take-multiple-passes...

    If a drive contained state secrets, I might use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/zero, but those kinds of drives are probably just shredded.

  • atmanactive8 days ago
    How to deal with an android phone or tablet which you can't switch on anymore but you are absolutely sure there is still your personal data on it?
    • nja8 days ago
      I'm wondering the same! I have an old Android tablet that just boot-loops and has a swollen battery. I'd like to get rid of it but not sure how to wipe it first!
    • Nuent8 days ago
      If you can still open the recovery menu, you could wipe it from there. Otherwise, you should probably destroy the device/memory.
      • atmanactive8 days ago
        if I could pinpoint the eMMC I could just drill a hole in it
  • null_sig8 days ago
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  • throawayonthe9 days ago
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  • neeti28289 days ago
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