All though using a hammer and nail may be effective in rendering your phone useless, we don't recommend this method. However, there are a lot of great opportunities to recycle or even make money from a used cell phone. Perhaps holding you back from doing this is the thought of someone getting hold of your personal information that is on that phone.
How to Delete Your Personal Information from a Cell Phone
any of us seem to be getting more and more use to doing just about anything and everything with our cell phones. Our phones contain a lot of information as a result. So what should you do to get this information off of your phone? It is kind of like erasing your phone existence in a way.
Some phones will allow you to make a factory reset or hard reset. You may have to contact your carrier for the ability to do this. A reset should clear nearly all the information in its memory. Before you do this, save or transfer the information to your new device before you delete it. If you have one, erase SIM and SD cards.
If you’re keeping your phone number, you can ask your mobile provider about transferring your SIM card to your new device. SD cards often contain photos and other sensitive information. Even when you “wipe” your device, your SIM card or SD cards may retain information about you.
Remove them from your device or delete the data that’s stored on them. Double check to make sure it is all gone. Check your phone numbers, photos etc to make sure they are gone.
What to do with your clean phone.
One popular option is to make a few dollars by reselling your phone. Find out what your phone is worth check out Gazelle’s chart on trade-in values based on capacity Recycle or donate:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) CTIA-
The Wireless Association
Your carrier