Question about disposal of old Hobby phone...
I was unhappy with my previous hobby phone, so I bought a replacment. My quuestion is this; What is a fool-proof way to dispose of the old hobby phone and any lingering data? I have already flashed the contacts and rest the phone to factory defaults, but short of running an electro-magnet over it a couple of dozen times, I'm concerened there still might be something incriminating on it. Any Ideas?
Is there a "goal" to keep it intact? If not, careless physical disassembly can make it very difficult to recover anything useful from it. (Think "hammer", "salty water", etc.)
How many "real phones" can you think of that became disfunctional after an accidental dip in the pool, lake, river, ocean?
JMHO - no matter how you trash the hardware, who was the cell carrier still has intact phone number records. If for some reason LE wanted those records, LE could get them.
If you feel that threatened, certainly disassemble the unit and discard the pieces all over town in various trash bins might ease your anxiety.
otoh, hobbying "quietly" is the best was to avoid raising your hobby profile to the level where LE gets interested.
my last phone I "disposed" of, even though I went through and deleted numbers etc.. found its way scuba diving off the Fred Hartman bridge (the spansion bridge that crosses the Ship channel out near Baytown)
After deleting all data from the phone memory,
1- remove the battery and of course recycle responsibly;
2- look for and find the removable SIM card and crack it in half, throw each half away in different locations.
3- beat on it with a hammer, drive over it with something heavy, etc.
Put in in front of your tire and run it over a few times. Then ditch it in a dumpster somewhere. If it has a removable SIM card be sure to remove that and cut it up first.
Hand it to my wife, it will never be turned on when you need to get ahold of her, but will always be in her purse.