One approach to protect your privacy and personal information is to completely clear the phone data if you want to sell your phone but are worried about the personal information and media that you have saved on it. However, this procedure might be a little challenging and can differ depending on the phone’s operating system.
This helpful guide’s goal is to provide you with the precise instructions you can follow so that your phone data will be erased and prepared for exchange.
How to Wipe Your Phone Data
If you have an older phone, it could have an OS that isn’t covered here. This article provides instructions for using the major operating systems of phones that are now in widespread use. The user’s handbook for this particular phone may contain instructions on how to successfully delete the data. Make sure you have stored all the data you wish to save (such as contacts, images, etc.) to another device before beginning the process of deleting your data.
In addition, you should uninstall the relevant apps and remove any access rights this smartphone has to any of your bank or social media accounts.
How to Wipe Windows Phones Before Selling
There are still many Windows phones available even though this OS is no longer supported. Only corporate clients had access to the encryption features on these phones. You must also install dummy data to replace the actual data that you no longer want to be accessible on the phone in order to accomplish a factory reset.
- Start by resting the phone following these steps: Settings > About > Reset Your Phone.
- You must plug the smartphone into a Windows computer or laptop and launch the My Computer app after the device has been erased. Locate the phone’s related USB device icon in this window.
- Drag and drop fake data from your computer into the gadget to load it. Try to put as much of this in the folder as you can.
- To guarantee that all of the original data is entirely wiped, you will need to reset once more and go through this procedure up to three times.
- Visit your Microsoft account to delete the phone from your account as the last step in the reset process.
How to Wipe Android Phones Before Selling
You will have to overcome a few challenges to be able to erase the data from your Android device. Some recent Android releases have factory reset protection that makes the device inaccessible after a factory reset. This usually requires the old user data and password to be input before it can be used. Here’s how to wipe your android phone without problems:
- Turn off lock screen features
Start the process by turning off every lock screen feature you have on, including pin, facial recognition, password, fingerprint, and others. Simply go to the settings menu on your phone and tap on security, then screen kick. Ensure that there is no lock on the screen.
- Remove Google Account from device
Before wiping off the phone’s data, you have to remove or sign out your Google account from it. Simply go to your settings menu and tap on Users and Accounts, then tap on account information to remove it. For a Samsung device, you may need to also remove your Samsung account from the device.
- Tap the factory reset button
After taking the aforementioned steps, you can now tap on the factory reset option to erase your phone data. Do not do this if you are not ready to let go of your old device.
How to Wipe iPhones Before Selling
Apple products may be complicated to reset since they are coupled with other gadgets, such as an iPad or an apple watch.
- Unpair all devices from your phone
Start the process by unpairing your iPad and iWatch from your iPhone so that there’s be no data left on it. Do this by turning off the“Find my iPhone” software by getting on the settings menu and tapping on iCloud. Once there, tap Find My iPhone and turn it off by entering the password to your Apple ID.
- Sign out of other services manually
After completing this, you will have to manually shut down and/or sign out of any further apps that may still be using your personal data, including iMessage and App Store.
- Erase your phone
Do this by following these steps: Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. After completing these steps, visit appleid.apple.com to update your Apple account profile by removing the serial number of the phone from it.