The Security Mentor

I've written about how you need to be careful when you sell, donate or throw away a used PC to make sure that sensitive information is really gone from the hard disk.

Your cellphone is a computer. It's probably powerful enough to fly the Space Shuttle, in fact. It stores information. There's your contact list, of course, and some kind of history of what numbers you've called. Then there's all the records the web browser keeps if you use the phone for web access.

Imagine that falling into the wrong hands if you ran a battered women's shelter. Or had a mistress. Or volunteered for the "wrong" political party in a bigoted area.

You can erase all that information but it's often not easy. There are lots of useful links in this David Pogue column about erasing/sanitizing a cellphone before disposing of it.