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99% of Recycled Cell Phones Still Hold Sensitive Data

by Terrence O'Brien on February 4, 2009 at 05:10 PM

99 Percent of Recycled Cell Phones Still Hold Sensitive DataWe had a feeling that people are having problems erasing the personal and sensitive data on their gadgets before recycling or reselling them. After the election, McCain campaign staffers had their BlackBerrys resold. This wouldn't have been a problem if the phones hadn't been loaded with information (including phone numbers and e-mail addresses) about donors, organizers, and other politicians. And we also reported on a study that revealed over 40-percent of BlackBerrys were found to still contain personal data.

But all the above news couldn't prepare us for the numbers coming out of Regenersis, a company that counts recycling cell phones as its primary business. The company tested a random sampling of the over 2 million handsets it recycled last year, and a terrifying 99-percent of them still contained data, such as personal e-mail, call logs, and financial data.

If you do decide to upgrade your phone or your gadgets, don't forget to wipe the data on that old phone or PC properly before passing it on. [From Yahoo! Tech, via textually.org]

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Tags: data, privacy, recycling, security, top

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