Daily Clerks

Here’s a great warning about what you do with your cell phone once you are done with it and have upgraded to a newer phone. Especially now-a-days with so much technology in them, such as email, web, text messaging, etc. Even though you think your data has been erased, there are software out there that can resurrect your info.

Take a look at this yahoo article that talks about the problems with just tossing your used phone.

For us Treo users, there is what’s called a “zero out reset” that completely wipes out the info and Trust Digital, the company that can resurrect the info, said they were unable to get any data off of a Treo that did the “zero out reset.”

Palm Inc., which makes the popular Treo phones, puts directions deep within its Web site for what it calls a “zero out reset.” It involves holding down three buttons simultaneously while pressing a fourth tiny button on the back of the phone.

But it’s so awkward to do that even Palm says it may take two people. A Palm executive, Joe Fabris, said the company made the process deliberately clumsy because it doesn’t want customers accidentally erasing their information.

Trust Digital resurrected erased e-mails and other information from a used Treo phone provided by The Associated Press after it was reset and appeared empty. The AP ordinarily purges its phones the correct way, but for demonstration purposes turned over a reporter’s phone that had been simply reset to see whether Trust Digital could recover the information. It did.

Once the AP phone was properly wiped using Palm’s awkward zero-out technique, no information could be recovered.

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