It is now far more profitable to sell an old hard drive, tablet, laptop, or smartphone.
Customers are getting far better bargains from companies like Cashify, which buy used electronics directly from consumers and pay them immediately, than from nearby junk dealers when they exchange their old devices during online sales on Amazon.in and Flipkart.com.
However, it can be dangerous to throw away outdated devices, particularly those that contain sensitive information, without taking the necessary precautions to clean them.
According to a recent report by Kaspersky Labs, an individual’s personal data can be sold on the dark web (the part of the internet which cannot be seen by most users since it is not indexed by search engines) for as low as ₹ 3,500.
“For an individual, unsafe disposal can lead to compromise of private information like pictures, contacts, messages, chats, passwords, identity documents and financial details. This can cause damages like online identity theft or misuse of digital identity, hacks, financial loss and embarrassments,” cautions Sunil Chandna, CEO of Stellar, a leading data recovery company.
To assess the risk of data theft on second-hand devices, researchers at Stellar purchased multiple hard disk drives from an online store that bought and sold second hand devices in India and found that majority of drives were formatted but not wiped clean.
Using a free DIY (do it yourself) data recovery software, the researchers were able to recover huge amounts of data contained in files.
It is safe to sell old devices like smartphones or laptops only once they have been properly cleaned of important data, which one does not want to be exposed.
According to Sanjay Katkar, chief technology officer and joint managing director of Quick Heal Technologies, there are also a number of software programs that can fully delete the data on these devices.
According to Chandna of Stellar, resetting a device is not a guaranteed way to remove data from its storage medium forever.
According to him, data on a computer, server, memory card, hard drive, smartphone, or other device can be fully and permanently erased using certified and safe professional data erasure programs like BitRaser.
