Here is how to delete data from your old phone

VANCOUVER -

Is it time for a cellphone upgrade? Beware. You may have deleted your personal information from you old phone, but it could still be recovered and end up in the wrong hands.

A new study by the University of Guelph has found one out of four people do not properly delete sensitive data from their phone.

"We underestimate the amount of information that our devices contain," said Hassan Khan, computer science professor at the University of Guelph.

"A lot of people just think that if you remove your SIM card, that's all that matters that has your information on it," said Sakir Java, a used cellphone retailer.

Java sees plenty of dropped off used phones, which still contain sensitive data.

According to the Guelph study, about 30 per cent of users manually delete the data, making it recoverable. You need to hit factory reset.

"Once factory restart deletes data, using normal forensic tools, no one will be able to recover that data," said Khan.

However, there is still a chance data can be retrieved on some older phones, even after doing a reset.

A few years ago, the security folks at Burnaby's Fortinet demonstrated how to recover data on some older model phones after hitting reset several times.

“They’re never truly deleted off of the drive,” said Derek Manky, Fortinet Global Security Strategist.

You need to encrypt the data before doing a reset and you need to do that manually with some older phones.

“If we go the security settings and we scroll down here to encryption,” Manky said while showing CTV News how to do it. “So we want to do the SD card plus the internal phone storage.”

Then you hit the factory reset.

Fortunately, newer phones and iPhones now automatically encrypt your data.

“They’re not going to be able to get access to that encrypted data unless they know the PIN code for it,” said Manky.

That is why you also need to make sure you use a secure PIN and change it regularly. You do not want your private information ending up in the wrong hands.

With files from Stephanie Villella, CTV News Kitchener