What’s worse: losing your wallet or recycling your cell phone?

I always thought the biggest pain in the you know what was losing my wallet, but after reading this blog on Wired Gadget Lab, maybe my cell phone poses a bigger problem.

Gadget Lab gathered up used cell phones no longer needed from staff around the office. They were able to get “two iPhone 3G models, two Motorola Droids, an LG Dare and an LG Optimus.” Although the users did everything right in terms of “erasing” the data, what they found remaining on the phones was quite alarming:

E-mail data that could positively identify the phone’s owner via his e-mail address.
Photos which still had metadata, including the dates, times and locations in which the photos were shot.
Documents including a tax return with a Social Security number and a .pdf bank statement.
Website images, some music and media files, application preference files and a phone number in a user library that could trace the phone to its owner.
Hundreds of phone numbers from a contacts database.
Wi-Fi and cellular access point the phone had ever come across — 68,390 Wi-Fi points and 61,202 cell sites.
Text messages, e-mails and lists of websites visited, as well as data from photos to positively identify the owner’s first and last name, e-mail address and phone number.

Given, the users did everything right in terms of deleting all of the data and resetting the phones to factory settings and data still remained, what is the solution? The suggestion: smash the phone to pieces. Hardly scientific, and hardly eco-friendly, but effective. I wonder if such phone recycling bins you see at Best Buy and Target will take pieces of phones versus the whole thing…I couldn’t find any terms and conditions indicating the phones had to be in one piece. If you do, please add to the comments.

The lesson here is that with any device that digitally stores information, personal or corporate related, there is a risk of that information falling into the wrong hands. What’s more is that the wrong hands are developing easier ways at getting at said information. If this is the case, and we know it is, why wouldn’t every storage medium for nearly every type of device have a feature like Instant Secure Erase. For me, it just makes sense.

So, what are you more afraid of losing…what’s in your wallet, or what’s on your cell phone?

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