Windows Phone Thoughts: Dead (to you) Phones Tell Some Tales

"Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think. A popular practice among sellers, resetting the phone, often means sensitive information appears to have been erased. But it can be resurrected using specialized yet inexpensive software found on the Internet....Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, a respected computer security expert, said phone owners should decide whether to auction their used equipment for a few hundred dollars — and risk revealing their secrets — or effectively toss their old phones under a large truck to dispose of them. What about a case like the Lothario whose affair Trust Digital discovered? "I'd run over the phone," Zatko said. "Maybe give it an acid bath.""

Straight from the "Scaring you to death about selling your old devices" column comes this piece from MSNBC. The warnings given and the (rather extreme) advice will go far in protecting you. What will go even farther is a sound security policy (i.e. mandatory encryption) and device sanitization process for corporate-provided devices (Whereby the company would take appropriate measures to remove all traces of data before the phone could be sold). Anyone now worried that their former phones may be telling secrets?