Selling your phone is not simple like taking the money and just giving away your phone. Your phone contains your personal data which you may not want to share with others and if it falls into wrong hands after selling, your personal data can be misused. Whether you have an android phone, an iPhone or a windows phone, if you are planning to sell it, you must follow some steps before to protect your data. We will explain those steps for an android phone below.
Deactivate your account with your wireless carrier
This is the most important step and must be done at first. Most of the people don’t mention it but neglecting this step can cause problems for both the buyer and the seller. It is important to ensure that your phone is not linked with any active wireless carrier. If you will forget to remove the device from your service provider, your buyer will have difficulty in activating it as your device is still active on the previous account and maybe he may not have any method to reach you. While if you transfer your number without changing it, then this problem will not occur. In case of a GSM device, just remove the SIM card. Never skip this step.
Back up all your important data
Back up your data including app data, contacts, calendar, important emails, messages, documents etc to Google Drive if this is an option. But if you already have a new phone which you are going to use as a replacement, then it’s best to transfer all your files and important data to this new device. You can also transfer your photos and videos manually by connecting your device to a computer and then moving files from your device to your computer if you don’t have an SD card in your phone. But, if you don’t have a new phone, then Google Drive option can be used.
For that-
- Go to settings
- Then select ‘Backup & Reset’ option
- Then select ‘Device Backup’ and then check ‘Back up to Google Drive’.
Also,move to Settings>Accounts>Google>Gmail account to check what is synced and make sure your contacts are synced. If you can’t back up your photos and videos manually, then back up it to the cloud. You can also backup your chats on Google Drive. Now, you can remove SIM and SD card.
Encrypt your phone
Now, your data is backed up but it is not enough. To ensure more protection of your data, you must encrypt your phone so that if anyone tries to access the data after, they will see weird data instead of information. For this, head to Settings>Security>Encrypt phone. While some of you already have encryption active.
- Remove Your Google Account And Then Apply Factory Reset
First, remove your Google account, for this go to Settings>Account & Sync>Google, then select your account and then choose the option ‘Remove Account’ from the menu.
Now reset your phone by heading to Settings>Backup & Reset>Factory Data Reset and then click on ‘Reset Phone’.
All the steps are done and now you can sell your phone without any fear of misusing of data.
