Tech Tips
Recycling Your Smartphone
Trading in or donating old phones keeps the batteries and other toxic materials in the phone out of the landfill. It’s great for the environment! But in order to be reused, another person must in fact…handle the phone. Would you trust a stranger with unsupervised access to your unlocked phone? Probably not. So from a security standpoint, you need to make sure to remove as much of your information as possible before passing your device on to another potential user.
1. Erase what you can.
This means files, profiles, and applications. A factory reset will generally erase a great deal of the information and access, but double check to make sure. For more on how to reset an Android device, see Google’s Android Help page. For more on how to reset an iPhone, check out Apple’s Support page.
2. Remove phone access.
Log into accounts (like email, social media, etc) to which your phone had access that might limit access to a list of devices. Remove your old phone from the list of allowed devices.
If you have done work on your personal device, you may need to notify your technology representative. This will ensure they can end all organization permissions associated with that phone and set up new permissions that do not transfer over.
3. Remember your removable storage.
Many phones use SIM cards and/or SD cards. Removable storage can be powerful and will not necessarily be deleted with a factory reset of your device. Make sure you keep those bits instead of passing them on to the next user.
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Frontline Technology is one of the only ministry-focused IT companies that is led by pastors and ministry leaders.