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A new investigation that has been conducted by Channel 4 has shed light on an increasingly large concern; namely how personal information can be accessed on second hand mobile phones despite its data appearing to be erased. Second hand stores pawn shops and other exchange stores across the UK have long been regarded as a good way for customers to rid themselves of unwanted junk like mobile phones that are no longer considered cutting edge technology. But what many people don’t realise is that these second hand phones are sold with lots of the previous owners’ personal information still inside. This can include text messages, passwords, photos, internet searches and credit card information. This kind of information can lead to instances of fraud, identity theft, and even blackmail. Until recently it was assumed that when such transactions are made, the store exchanging the phone will erase all personal details before selling the phone again, if the customer hasn’t already done this of course, but a recent study has shown that expert software technicians were able to access personal data on a second hand phone bought at a pawnbroker in less than an hour. Several cases of this nature have been reported, with extreme instances of data theft involving the loss of people’s private and sometimes sexual text messages and photos, access to their email addresses/social media sites, and one customer who even had photographs of employment documents containing included her employer’s name and online password details on her phone. The reason for such an oversight is that many mobile users are under the impression that a phone’s "restore factory settings" setting will erase the entire history of the phones usage, but it will actually just delete the directory details that are there to tell the phone where personal information is located. This causes the phone to show files as deleted within the directory even though the info still remains within the phone’s memory which can be easily hacked into through the use of specialist software. The findings of the channel 4 report have shocked several businesses that specialise in second hand data. A spokesman for the popular exchange store Cash Converters announced his disgust that one of these episodes happened at one of the company’s stores: "All phones are wiped to a standard level and full factory restores are carried out. It is our understanding that specialist software may still be able to recover certain information stored on the phone, but we do everything in our power to ensure all personal data is removed from the device." This case is likely to result in extra special care being taken by staff at exchange stores which deal with second hand mobile phones. But it also shows that mobile phone users still have a lot to learn about staying safe while using their device. Another common problem that catches mobile phone users out is when they use their phone abroad and amass excessive data roaming costs in the process because they aren't sure how to arrange for the best roaming deals while they travel. If you want to be certain that your data roaming charges are kept as low as possible, visit Roaming Expert.com, where you can find best roaming deals for the network you use.
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