Advice On Disposal

gibbylinks

Hi All,

I have several old defunct tablets, what's the best way to dispose of them?

I'm worried that some technical whizz kid could get them working and then have access to my info.

short of taking a hammer to them is there a simple way to totally incapacitate them?

Thanks

drdocmatt

If they were encrypted then you don't need to worry.. and encryption was enabled by default on most devices from android 5 or so.

PerfectBlue97

Taking a hammer to a tablet seems like a waste of a good device.

Why not recycle them?

My personal opinion is that the best way to stop some whizz kid from retrieving your data is simple to ensure that the device goes to a regular kid.

Log out of all of your accounts, then do three factory resets. Then simply donate the device to the child of a friend or neighbour. An actual kid will be more interested in playing games than recovering your data.

Generally speaking the actual risk of somebody recovering your data is marginal, as most used devices simply don't end up in the hands of unscrupulous people. There are a lot more ordinary people who want a device than there are crooked ones who want to rip you off.

A basic factory reset will put your data outside of the reach of an ordinary person. A couple of factory resets will put it out of the reach of a moderately tech savey person, and putting your device in the hands of a legitimate person who just wants to play games and browse the web will protect your data forever.

gibbylinks

Sorry, didn't make myself clear. The tablets I have won't boot/start think batteries have gone or something similar. I don't want to pay out to get them repaired or spend money on them, but neither do I want someone else repairing them and getting my data. Because they won't boot I can't reset them.

PerfectBlue97

In that case, just leaver the back off, and remove the memory chip. It's likely to be a standard solid state chip and should be easy to spot. If it's soldered in, just screwdriver the connection to the main board.

People usually try to recover data from devices because it's an easy score. They don't go to much effort to recover it.

drdocmatt

People rarely try to recover data from devices, it's more pain than it's worth. So, given that they are almost certainly encrypted, just drop them in for recycling and walk away.