Old Cell Phones and GPS units

[AdamZ]

Local charities and women's shelter takes donations of used cell phones and GPS units so that the residents can call 911 if necessary I think they auction off the GPS units . My family has a bunch to donate mostly older flip phones and some older Tom Tom GPS units. Will simply removing the sim cards delete all contacts out of the cell phone and still allow it to call 911? Is there a way to delete " recent destinations from the GPS units"?

 

[AdamZ]

Anyone?

 

[Henning]

For the phones, yes, that will be sufficient. For the GPS, I'm not sure about deleting destination memory, that's likely model specific and I've never had a Tom Tom.

 

[flyingron]

Sorry, I disagree with Henning. The contacts are not necessarily (and frequently are not) in the SIM card. Some phones never stored them there, and on some phones it's an option to do so. You need to specifically check the phone you are getting rid of.

Also be sure to remove all those nude selfies, etc....they weren't ever in the SIM card.

 

[denverpilot]

Totally depends on the phone. Google the phone model number and " wipe " or hunt down the manual. Almost all have a way to fully wipe now. And you may have to wipe both the phone and the SIM. It's not that common to store contacts in the SIM much anymore. More memory, more fields, faster flash performance in the phone hardware itself vs talking to the SIM.

 

[Old Geek]

Older cell phones often kept contact info in the phone non-volatile memory. Removing the SIM will not erase it.

 

[Henning]

I took that he said remove the SIM and delete the contacts...

 

[BillTIZ]

For the phones, yes, that will be sufficient. For the GPS, I'm not sure about deleting destination memory, that's likely model specific and I've never had a Tom Tom.

I pulled the card OT of an old phone, Blackberry, and then checked the address and contacts. They were still there. I was not about to send that phone off for donation.

Guess I need to find the factory reset pin.

 

[jtheune]

I was just watching a episode of NCIS Los Angeles they just hit a button on their phone to run a secure wipe on it before they put it in a bag to float down the sewer to fool the bad guys. Seems like a reasonable way to do it



Now come on I know it's a tv show but I could not help relating it as both things happened in the last couple of days

 

[jtheune]

ok after my last snarky post I did a looking looking around and found a slew of apps that do exactly what you want for android devices. found some cool ones that allow you to do it remotely if your phone is lost or stolen as well.

 

[AdamZ]

ok after my last snarky post I did a looking looking around and found a slew of apps that do exactly what you want for android devices. found some cool ones that allow you to do it remotely if your phone is lost or stolen as well.

LOL Thanks John. These are my parents old phone, no smart phones in thier house.

 

[BillTIZ]

ok after my last snarky post I did a looking looking around and found a slew of apps that do exactly what you want for android devices. found some cool ones that allow you to do it remotely if your phone is lost or stolen as well.

My Verizon android phone came with a "find phone" app that will also erase the data remotely.

 

[denverpilot]

Just a side note. Many of the "delete" functions on phones simply mark the data deleted so it's not readily accessible to the user interface, but don't actually overwrite the data in Flash RAM storage.

Then a good forensic trained person or hacker can still get the data out of the phone via jail-breaking or similar lower level access to the file system.

You have to hunt a bit to find out how to do a "true wipe" of your specific model of phone if you're paranoid that someone will hunt through it at their leisure once you get rid of it.

Early iOS devices were particularly bad about this. The way to wipe house was to enter your lock PIN multiple times until the phone assumed you were a bad person trying to brute force a PIN, and then it did a security wipe. The menu item to delete data, wasn't.