Wiping your Mobile Apple Data 2/3
Are you looking to get rid of your old device? You don’t want all those selfies of you and your cat sitting alone on a Friday night falling into the wrong hands. Keep in mind, short of completely destroying your device, there is no 100% foolproof way to completely get rid of your data. With the right tools and a lot of moxy, someone who really wants to see you recent browser history can get that information. But there are steps you can take to significantly decrease the chances of that happening.
Currently there are 3 main mobile operating systems out there (yes, we are even including Windows phones). We’ll take you step by step on how to successfully protect all of your precious and sensitive data from lingering on your device when you go to get rid of it in this 3 part series.
Getting Started:
- Make sure you backup everything, even your contacts. There are several apps that can do this for you, but the easiest way is to plug your device into your computer and transfer all of you things over to your PC or Mac.
- Remove your SIM card and any external SD cards you have.
- Logout of all of your email & social media accounts. Make sure you sign out of any applications that you had to separately sign into as well.
- It helps to write down the serial number of your device for your records, just in case.
iOS:
When you set a passcode on Apple devices that support iOS 5 or later, they include hardware encryption. The encryption key will be overwritten when you reset it, which makes it hard for anyone who attempts to recover the data.
- Unpair devices like your Apple Watch. Then, turn off Find My iPhone.
- iOS 10.2 or earlier, go to Settings
- iCloud
- Find My iPhone
- Enter your Apple ID password if prompted
- iOS 10.3 or later, go to Settings
- Your name
- iCloud
- Find My iPhone.
- Sign out of your services like iMessage and the App Store
- Go to Settings
- Messages
- Toggle the iMessage option
- For your Apple ID go to Settings
- iTunes & App Store
- Tap your Apple ID email address
- Tap Sign Out
- Don’t forget to sign out of any apps or social media accounts you may have like Facebook or Twitter.
- Sign out of iCloud completely.
- Go to Settings
- iCloud
- Sign Out at the bottom of the page
- iOS 10.3 and later go to Settings
- Your name
- Sign Out
- iOS 7 devices
- Choose Delete Account
- Note: if you delete all your data manually without signing out of iCloud, it will also delete data stored on your iCloud, so be careful.
- Start the wipe process.
- Go to Settings
- General
- Reset
- Erase All Content and Settings
- Confirm the selection
- Remove the serial number of the device from your Apple account profile at appleid.apple.com.
Not planning to sell your device:
Completely destroy your device to eradicate all possible attempts at recovering your data. This is the safest and only way to truly prevent your data from being recovered by the most evil of Hollywood style hackers determined to ruin your life by retweeting all of those unfiltered bathroom selfies that never got posted.
- Locate a drill
- Drill into the screen of your phone until reaching through the backside
- Put your device into a bag
- Seal the bag completely
- Obtain a sledgehammer from your local hardware store
- Smash your device into pieces
- Take the remaining pieces and put them into an industrial-strength grinder which will obliterate your device into dust
- Put that dust into an Urn
- Put the Urn on your mantle so you can pay homage to the device that once served you so well
- Send Holiday Cards to friends with pictures of you and the Urn every chance you get
- Use your new device to do this, as your old device probably won’t take very good selfies anymore if you followed these instructions properly.
For Windows: https://buybacksolutio.wpengine.com/wiping-your-mobile-windows-data-1-3/
For Android: https://buybacksolutio.wpengine.com/wiping-your-mobile-android-data-2-3/
Our Website: https://buybacksolutio.wpengine.com
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