disposing of old computers and smartphone?

[kali]

The city dump takes old electronics and I believe Costco and other retailers will as well. My question is about making sure our data is secure. We can back up files we need but I'm worried about someone reading the data off the discarded electronics. (Things like downloaded credit card statements, personal records, passwords saved in browsers, etc.)

They all say "don't worry, we erase your data" but I'm so paranoid about identity theft, etc that I feel very uncomfortable dropping off a hard drive and just trusting that the proper steps will be taken to truly wipe the data clean so that it is unrecoverable. My cell phone totally crashed a few weeks ago and I was so reluctant to exchange it for a new one.

I could try to delete sensitive files, but have read that that doesn't necessarily do the trick. Does formatting the hard drive take care of it?

[123LuckyMom]

Someone else will probably know better, but that's what I did when I donated my old computer. I couldn't think of anything I could do beyond reformatting the drive.

Good luck!

[fortato]

My husband is the genius in that department, I don't know what he did- I think he formatted the hard drives before we got rid of them...

but no one wanted our old machines, so we ended up bringing them to the dump... where we had to pay to leave them.... Now I understand why people throw stuff like that into the woods. $25 to dispose of a computer and monitor.

[kali]

Someone else will probably know better, but that's what I did when I donated my old computer. I couldn't think of anything I could do beyond reformatting the drive.

Good luck!

Thanks! I'm going to go with that for the stuff that still boots up, unless someone chimes in and says it's not enough. I should have mentioned that my question is partly motivated by electronics that are so old or broken that they no longer boot up, but still have data on them.

That was the case with my cell phone. I reluctantly accepted that it would be hard to pull data from something totally dead, but the paranoid side of me kept thinking that with all the motivated criminals out there someone might have the right skills/equipment to power it up long enough to steal data. I also have an old laptop that doesn't power up anymore but I can't bring myself to just drop it off at the dump!

[codex57]

Search how to "wipe" your data on your phone and computer. I'm sure there are free programs on download.com (or check through cnet.com).

To be safe, you can also take a magnet and run it over the hard drive when you're done.