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Upgrading your smartphone has become a necessary chore.
And since modern cell phones are more like computers than cell phones, this process is not only cumbersome, but also risky.
Who will get your old device? Taking the time to properly erase your phone can help prevent unauthorized access to your account.
Another thing to consider when migrating is whether you have everything you need, such as important files and a password authentication system.
Below are some important precautions to take before trading, selling, or otherwise disposing of your old smartphone.
1. Backup everything
Smartphones may have built-in tools to quickly and easily port data and settings to new devices. But you shouldn’t rely on them to contain everything you want to keep.
Take your time and manually copy photos, videos, notes, music, and any other files you want to keep. The easiest way to do this is to send everything to a cloud storage service like Google One, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud.
Worst of all, you know you were wasting your time because your phone’s data transfer was completely done. If you don’t need the duplicate files, delete them. However, in other scenarios, you’ll be happy to have done the backup yourself.
2. Delete account information
It’s easy to forget that by letting your phone or browser store your passwords, you’re easily bypassing parts of the login process. But if an unauthorized person inherited your old phone, you wouldn’t want them to have similarly easy access to your account.
Leave no digital trail behind. Log out of all accounts, delete saved passwords or account records, and clear your browser history.
3. Prepare to transfer 2FA to your new device
A password is one thing. But if you’re smart, you’re also protecting your account with two-factor (or more) authentication (often he’s abbreviated as 2FA).
In that case, you basically need two keys for your account. A second form of verification that can be a password and a one-time code sent to your phone, email, or authenticator app. Two-factor authentication makes it very difficult for thieves to access your account, even if they know your password. That is, unless they also have your phone and an authenticator app.
Even if you plan to wipe the device down or smash it with a hammer, consider 2FA first. Otherwise, you may get banned from your account.
If you use a 2FA authenticator app, be sure to move to a new device before giving up your old phone. Here are the steps for the two most popular authenticator apps:
4. Remove any SIM or memory cards.
Don’t forget what should physically come out of your phone. If your device has a slot for an SD memory card, have an SD memory card ready.
If your wireless service account information and phone number are stored on a physical SIM card instead of an eSIM, you may also need that.
5. Completely reset your device
When a phone can be “factory reset” to restore it to when it was new, it might seem pointless to take some of the previous precautions.
But a quick search on the internet will show you many questions and tutorials about recovering phone data after factory reset. It makes no sense to risk leaving something important behind like this.
Nonetheless, a factory reset is likely to catch at least some of the data you forgot to delete and is probably the easiest thing on this list.Here are the steps for iPhone and Android devices explain.
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