There’s a lot of personal information on your phone, tablet, or laptop — and you don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. Keep your devices secure, even when you dispose of them. In general, think twice before sacrificing security for convenience.
- Protect access to your devices.
- Lock your device with a PIN, a passcode, your fingerprint, or your face.
- Don’t leave your laptop or phone in your car.
- Carry a laptop in a backpack or briefcase, not a laptop bag, so no one knows what you have.
- Use programs that track your devices’ locations if they’re stolen.
- Save your files in a cloud storage service or to an external hard drive (stored in a safe place). If your computer is stolen, you’ll still have access to your files.
- Before recycling or donating your phone or tablet, make sure you’ve backed up your device. Then check your owner’s manual or the sites of your service provider or device manufacturer for how to factory reset or erase your hard drive. Remove or erase SIM and external SD cards; they may still have information about you.
- Before recycling or donating your laptop, save any files you want to keep to a cloud storage service, a new computer, a USB drive, or an external hard drive. Use a wipe program to erase the entire hard drive or remove and physically destroy the hard drive.
