I have several smartphones that no longer work. I was going to rid of them one way or another, but it concerns me a bit that someone could recover information from those devices (photos, accounts, etc). Is it safe to dispose them?
I can’t delete anything since the phones don’t work. I can’t just remove the “hard drive” can I?
I can’t just remove the “hard drive” can I?
Yes, you can. You could desolder the flash chips which are used to store your data.
You could also pry the phone open and destroy the flash chip.
Newer Android phones thankfully have full disk encryption which makes recovery without a PIN nearly impossible.
I don’t have a solder, and even if I had one I wouldn’t know what to desolder or how. But thanks for the info about disk encryption :D
you can recycle it after memory wipe.
In most cases, you don’t have anything to fear, since the encryption on Android phones is pretty good these days. However if you really feel like it could compromise you in any way, I can’t imagine a hammer wouldn’t do the trick.
Thank you, this does give me more confidence. I’d like to hammer, sounds fun, it but I probably won’t. But just to be curious is encryption really that good. As far as I know 4 pin passwords and patterns are the most common way to lock a password, isn’t that easy to crack?
I’ll argue the way of the hammer, it’s the only way to be sure.
Also, please rip out the storage chip to bust it and recycle the rest. Particularly old batteries.
i would soak in water
well, that’s how most of them got broken anyways. Sometimes water and sometimes coffee. That’s why I think that if I ever by a phone it should be waterproof.
