More people are trading in or recycling their old smartphones but many are unwittingly sharing their personal information by not erasing the device first.
A survey by Optus said 45 per cent of second-hand tech owners have had a peek at personal content that have been left on discarded devices.
This research come just as Optus is launching its new Trade In, Trade Up service that will allow customers put the agreed value of their old device towards the their phone bill.
The study revealed second–hand owners are being exposed all sorts of material left on old devices with the most popular being personal snaps (28 per cent), text messages (18 per cent), internet history (15 per cent) and videos (14 per cent).
Whether you’re trading in or handing your device off to a friend or family member users should follow a few easy steps.
1. Back up all of the content on your device to a computer of the cloud.
2. Manually erase all of the data on your device.
3. Perform a factory reset of the product that will remove all of your content and return the device to its default state.
“Passing on old tech without erasing it first is essentially like giving someone front row tickets to your private life. Optus is encouraging people to take extra care and erase the content you don’t want others to see,” said Ben White, Vice President, Mobile Marketing at Optus.
Optus’s new Trade In, Trade Up service for new and re-contracting post-paid customers – an Australian mobile carrier first – that will offer a way for users to receive a trade-in amount for their device that can then be offered as credit on their monthly bill.
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