Cell Phones Won't Keep Your Secrets

[hancioglu 0]

Selling an old wireless phone might seem like a good way to make a little extra money, but it can be a lot like putting your diary on eBay. Security analysts found 27,000 pages of documents on 10 phones they bought online -- including details of a multi-million dollar contract bid, bank account passwords and secret notes between a married man and his girlfriend.

For full story http://www.cnn.com/TECH/

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[Dagoth Nereviar 0]

Haha, wooooaaaaaah o.oI'm destroying mty phone then :DWell, I never have anything important on it anyways

[michaelper22 0]

PC World discussed cell phone privacy in a Privacy Watch column once. They say that before you sell or give away your phone, you should reset it to clear out your personal info. The reset command for your phone can be really long and complicated, usually invloving pressing buttons in a specific sequence. You can find the reset commands at The Cell Phone Data Eraser Page (at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/), where instructions are listed for many phones.

[Dooga 0]

hmm... I thought you could just delete each thing by pressing the delete option. I guess I'm wrong....

[Bkag 0]

Arent delete code illeagle, the police confiscated my friends phone to review deleted text messages, kinda spooky

[pixieloo 0]

That's kind of scary.. What if you delete everything? Can things stil be found out?

[kawasu 0]

this is just like you harddrive, een if u format it there are still ways people can retreive every piece of data you had on it before u formatted. this is because the data is still there in the diisks, its just showing that its not there by the system. i think if u format and repplace the harddrive with other files it will overwrite all teh information/data prior to formatting... but its a bit hectic and extreme. i guess u'd have to if u want to hide some really imoportant data though.

[darran 0]

This is really freaky, deleted text are still being able to be located. I would never store any passwords on my phone. But shouldn't all the data be found in the SIM card and not in the phone itself.Does anyone have any idea how this reset procedure work? I am selling off my phone in a month's time and it would be great if they are not able to locate my data in the phone.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Yes, by "deleting" a file, one simply tells the computer (or phone) to allow the data allotted to that file to be overwritten, so until that happens, it is still physically there, just not virtually.Only thing I can say is that, before discarding your phone, be sure to run it over an extremely powerful electromagnet.

[DogEater008 0]

lol.. yeah.. i read that while i was in class... The same thing for your computer's hard drive too. .When you "format" your hard drive.... it only erase DISK log (yeah. .i forgot the technical term for it. .but yeah).. the "disk log" stores all the information about where a file is located on which sector on your disk. I guess there are ways to recover those lost "disk log"...

[cangor 0]

Yeah. It?s crazy? people have their lives on their cell phones. In my opinion people are waaaaay too attached to their cell phones and in general have this false sense of security about technology. But really, if you?re going to sell your cell phone or whatever why don?t you at least CHECK if there is anything personal on it? Wouldn?t you do the same thing if you sold your computer? Cell phones won't keep your secrets? Duh, of course they won't! I mean, maybe they just forgot or something, but I doubt it. You should learn how to use any such device if you own it...

[T100 0]

Cell phone of course is no good keeper of secret. There is a case in Hong Kong where a couple has filmed something personal with their cell phone but sell it over the internet. The buyer get the phone and upload that personal short clip over the net. And the clip become hugely popular. There is another case with an artist, lost her phone on in a cab, gets backmailed by the man who got the phone, for there is a clip of her changing clothes in the phone. The man is caught and sentenced to prison. But still, the clip gets spread out. Don't keep secrets in your phones.

[mtvoyagers 0]

This is really freaky, deleted text are still being able to be located. I would never store any passwords on my phone. But shouldn't all the data be found in the SIM card and not in the phone itself.
Does anyone have any idea how this reset procedure work? I am selling off my phone in a month's time and it would be great if they are not able to locate my data in the phone.

The best thing to do would probably be to go to your wireless carier and tell them you want it completely reset, to sell. They have the technologie to do it the right way... also if you have a blackberry delberitly enter your password incorrectly 11 times and it will self destruct on the inside... its all in that CNN article

oh and i am just guessing, using logic i would think that "reseting" your cell would be like formating your hard drive, pointless you are just changing a log, thats all, and i would assume the same for a cell phone, since the cell phone acts the same as a comuter, just a much small amount of everything, but still the same

[darran 0]

Cell phone of course is no good keeper of secret. There is a case in Hong Kong where a couple has filmed something personal with their cell phone but sell it over the internet. The buyer get the phone and upload that personal short clip over the net. And the clip become hugely popular. There is another case with an artist, lost her phone on in a cab, gets backmailed by the man who got the phone, for there is a clip of her changing clothes in the phone. The man is caught and sentenced to prison. But still, the clip gets spread out.
Don't keep secrets in your phones.

I don't understand what you are saying. So a couple filmed a personal clip with their cell phone and they sell it over the internet? You have already said it is personal so I find no reason why they would want to sell the clip over the internet. However in Singapore, there is a case whereby a 18 year old girl filmed a sex session with her boyfriend using her mobile, but it was stolen and ever since then, the video has been circulated over the internet and sold even in places like Malaysia as porn VCDs. The secrets within your mobile is very dangerous, they may even lead to you living a life of misery should you not be careful