there is reason why there are shredders which can easily digest old 5 1/4 inch full height harddrives, or V6 motor blocks. For smartphones one step smaller is required, else a flash chip might make it through alive. Activated device encryption is not yet an enforced standard for every mobile...

let the turtle jokes roll in...

I'm surprised that people wanting to wipe their own device, but don't know how to, don't just take the device out on the back porch and have at it with a sledgehammer. Results:

1. Data wiped, device unusable.

2. User feels psychologically-better.

Icon for, "Wear appropriate PPE when sledgehammering electronic devices, as sharp bits could fly up and injure you."

umm no, it's not just the sharp bits.

Or at least not without taking out the Li-ion battery first

(and good luck if that is not user-removable).

Speaking from experience: someone I know did this when I was visiting, and they had to hurriedly move the whole thing out into a more "open area" when it started smoking. The stink was horrible, and I'm willing to bet it was quite hazardous.

I can't recall if it burst into flame before or after the smoke though.

(and good luck if that is not user-removable).

Is it with a big enough hammer.

I have a rather nice pickaxe that I keep for these sorts of situations.

It's remarkably cathartic, too.

But nobody was recovering the data afterwards. So job done!

"I can't recall if it burst into flame before or after the smoke though."

Yet another reason besides electronic waste and planned obsolescence to ban most devices with non-user-replaceable batteries.

"I can't recall if it burst into flame before or after the smoke though."

Presumably the data was gone though. Task failed successfully

There is an unfortunate relation between "smart" devices and how technically "smart" most people are nowadays.

From a recent article in the website " Buzzfeed" ...

"BuzzFeed

"Older People Are Sharing What Scares Them Most About Younger Generations", by Hannah Loewentheil, Updated Sat, November 30, 2024, 7:18 AM CST·7 min read

...

2."They CANNOT use a computer. They can surf the web but cannot do anything useful. Many of my students are worse than my parents at doing simple things like attaching documents to emails or understanding the file path."

----------------------------------------------------------------

It seems that as people become more dependent on 'smart' devices, the more dumb they become...and this should be of very great concern to any and all regarding the use of 'smart' technology in cars to--ostensibly--make people "better" drivers.

On the plus side, thick young people will have to keep paying us old gits to help them out.

I usually use a hammer for hard drives. Be careful not to smash your paving.

"I usually use a hammer for hard drives. Be careful not to smash your paving"

If they still work, I generally use dd to zero them out then donate them to one of the local recycling operations. If not, I drill a hole through the case and platter then tie the platter off with a zip tie to keep it from rotating. Probably not as effective as a really thorough bludgeoning, but strangely satisfying.

I found some of those platters actually surprisingly hard to drill through.

That said, I have these blue painted Bosch drills that drill both metal and concrete, and they do the job just fine if I set the drill to percussion.

As always, percussive treatment gets the job done :).

A lot of platters now are glass. Hard, but easy to shatter.

I have used acid to etch the coating off glass platters. It left me with a nice, clear glass disk.

For metal platters, I have used a blowtorch and angle grinder. No one is getting any data off those disks ever.

Kids now hate email almost as much as I hate making phone calls.

I "wipe" my dead devices, whether they be phones, disk drives, or tablets, with the pointy end of a welder's "pick hammer."

Now that's what I call satisfaction.

I wonder, now that I'm thinking of it, how many people take the time to wipe the computers in their cars when they trade them in or even have an idea how to do it? In the last couple cars I've owned the setting to clear the system was buried about ten levels deep in menus.

@Philo T Farnsworth "I wonder, now that I'm thinking of it, how many people take the time to wipe the computers in their cars when they trade them in or even have an idea how to do it?"

Having had a hire car* for the last week, I'd say not a lot. After pairing my phone to play music I then had to scroll through a list of 15 other phones to find mine. 15 previous drivers had left their phone data in the car's computer.

Before handing the car back I deleted my phone from the list though I have no idea if that was enough to clear the data collected from my phone off the system. Thankfully my phone runs /e/OS, the Renault was not able to access the phones content. Something it tried to do every time the phone connected, it would try to access Contacts and then the phone displayed an access failed message

*24 plate Renault Capture

I tend to dig out the factory reset in the car interface. That zaps everyone's details including mine, even though I only allow linking to music and phone functionality, never to contacts.

On my iPhone it asks me if I want to let the car access my Contacts, and when i tell it no it just moves on.

A hammer works for me.

My preference is on the side of a hill at 100 yards as I sight in a new rifle. Although as an American I don't NEED an excuse for another rifle, I will take whatever excuse I can muster ;-) The hard drives just get the 3/8" drill bit in the drill press. Quick and easy.

"Take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Of course these damn government types, restricting my 2A rights to own nukes for personal use.

Recreational McNukes when?

If only I lived in the States...

The word is drawer, not draw, which is a verb not a noun.

I find it extremely ironic that many here ridicule such "pedantry", considering the importance of semantics to programming and IT in general.

Those who ridicule the pedant are generally those who can't write English to start with.

They can’t write good, you mean?

"Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer." --

Edsger Dijkstra

But he was Dutch. I suppose being able to pronounce Dutch was an advantage reading assembly

I don't know why this particular one gets on my nerves so much, it's not even one I get wrong due to dyslexia!

I don't know why that particular spelling gets on my nerves so much, It's not even one that trips me up with dyslexia!

Pleased to see that it has been corrected. Merry Christmas to the subs

Winter drawers on...

Was going to add: nothing gathers dust in a drawer. Unless it’s permanently open, but that’d be a tray or a box…

Obviously not a cat ownee

Enough of all this I'm off to drawer a pitcher

Needs to be a tall drawer, or a drawer who can draw tall drawers.

The OS developers can add an app for idiots to help with wiping data?

Obviously it would have to be an app, because most users can't operate at system level either because they're not as interested, or as learned as the El Reg readers.

Hardly the most mind blowing of items from the ICO.

Which begs the next question:

Are the ICO going to do anything about it?

I'll get my coat as I'm not going to wait for the ICO to do anything, as usual! :)

On an iPhone; Settings, General, Transfer and Reset. One item because you usually want to transfer all data to a new phone, then reset the original phone.

Assuming it's still working...

You should be able to wipe it remotely from the 'find my phone', if you didn't disable it... and, again, if it's working

I think people don't understand how low the risk is, even if they dispose of a working phone. If I took my iPhone, turned it off (or it had broken and was "off") and gave it to you you're not going to be able to get any data off it unless you're willing to invest significant resources and even then you may not. On first unlock after boot phones require the password, biometrics don't work. Even the companies like Cellebrite that make a living off selling tools for police etc. to unlock phones have a much harder time dealing with phones that are in "first unlock" state. That's why Apple's change with iOS 18.1 to automatically reboot if a phone hasn't been unlocked with Face ID for 48 hours has frustrated police so much, police have a much shorter window to get approval to spend the money necessary for that (and the process must be complete before the time expires or the phone will reboot in the middle of the attempt)

I'm not saying it is impossible to unlock such phones and read the data, even though Cellebrite documents showed it has no way of accessing recent iPhone models in first unlock state today. Because that doesn't mean they couldn't discover a way tomorrow, or that someone else already has. But if you're selling a phone on eBay or giving it away to charity or sending it to recycling no one is going to invest the resources to unlock your phone unless you are "somebody". i.e. if they know they've got Taylor Swift's iPhone they might spend a lot of money trying to unlock it because there are potential gains (selling info to tabloids, blackmailing her, the possibility of finding financial information on it to steal from her) but if it is just some random phone and they have no idea who's it is? Nope, there is 0% chance of them getting in because even if ways of getting in exist they aren't going to pay for far more than the phone is worth to unlock it.

I'm talking mostly about iPhones here since that's what I have knowledge of, but my understanding is that the situation is pretty much the same with Pixel and high end Samsungs (except that I don't think they do the automatic reboot thing yet) Cheaper models may have fewer protections so extra paranoia might be justified that end user attacks might be known. Though even then someone has to care enough to bother.

The biggest risk is that people might pick up some unerased devices in the hopes that some of them have a pin of 123456 or unlock without a pin at all. Then they have a low-cost way to steal things. It's not hard to press the erase button, and for most people, there is little reason for concern that there will be recoverable data left after doing that. The flash may not be entirely erased, but most phones encrypt by default and the part of the flash where the key is has been erased. For most opportunistic attackers, getting low-level access to read the flash is more work than they're going to do either.

There are exceptions for phones or drives that don't work where physical destruction is advisable. Otherwise, most people have no need to do that.

Yes, it would be very similar with all Android OS mobile phones - which as you say, Pixels and high-end Samsungs use, but also low-end Samsungs, middle-of-the-road Samsungs, Motorolas (high, low, and mid), Xiaomis and most other Android OS mobiles made in the last few years.

Bottom line is, if you don't have the specific Google account details to log in (ie previously registered to the device), you would find it very difficult or very costly to access any of the info belonging to the user who hadn't wiped it.

Yup. I use this a lot at work (or just do it through Apple Configurator) because I loan out iPads.

On Google Chromebooks the corresponding option is called "Powerwash".

"The OS developers can add an app for idiots to help with wiping data?"

Well for [my version of] android, it's settings->system->advanced->reset options->erase all data. Hardly difficult.

How do you delete the data that Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the App providers etc stored?

Well if you are in the EU or UK the GDPR is you friend, make a subject access request and ask for full deletion.

They legally have to comply but in the rest of the world probably more chance of pigs evolving wings and jet engines at the same time…..

Not if you are trying to fly on American Airlines today.... Their jet engined thingies are grounded. Probably because the Pigs have come out in sympathy with the turkeys.

The headline was abbreviated here to "Technical fault grounds America" which seemed prescient