Old mobiles

cornishchick

the pile I have is all defunct due to not working/charging, I have no idea whats on some of them as they are at least 10 yrs old.. 
 So if I take them to the recycling center, can someone get info off them ? or do I smash them up like I used to with the laptops ? 
 whats the best way of ensuring no data can be retrieved easily? 

flaneurs_lobster

cornishchick said:

the pile I have is all defunct due to not working/charging, I have no idea whats on some of them as they are at least 10 yrs old.. 
 So if I take them to the recycling center, can someone get info off them ? or do I smash them up like I used to with the laptops ? 
 whats the best way of ensuring no data can be retrieved easily? 

How big's your stash?

If they are really not working then it would take specialist knowledge and equipment to extract any information that may be on them. 

You either trust that your recycling centre is not harvesting your 10 y.o. data OR smash them to bits with a hammer OR just stuff the phones in the bottom of a cupboard.

Mine live in a shoebox with my old hard drives at the back of the utility room.

moneysaver1978

What sort of information are potentially on the non-smart phones? The only data I could think of is the phone number and the text messages (with 160 character limit or similar!) so no banking or emails, etc surely?