The Office of the British Data Protection Commissioner warns that many adults do not know how to dispose of their old, unused smart devices. A worrying number of young people, on the other hand, do not care about emptying the devices.
A significant number of adults do not know how to delete personal data from an old smart device.
Clearing personal data from the old device is important before handing the device on. Despite this, almost every third, or about 29 percent, of adults do not know how to empty the devices, The Verge reports based on a survey by the British Data Protection Commissioner’s Office.
71 percent of those who responded to the survey thought it was important to clear the data from the old device, but almost a quarter, or about 24 percent, thought deleting the data was unnecessarily burdensome.
21 percent of young people did not consider erasing their own data important. 23 percent of young people said that they don’t even care about what might happen to personal information.
About one in seven (14 percent) of those aged 18–34 did not see the need to manage the emptying of their old device themselves, while only four percent of respondents over 55 think so. On the other hand, 84 percent of respondents said they would like to make sure data is deleted before disposing of the device.
According to the British Data Protection Commissioner’s office, deleting your own data from the old device is not difficult. By deleting the data, you can at the same time make sure that the data cannot be used, for example, to defraud.