Business Mobile World

Many of us have mobile phones lying around in drawers unused. Often a family could have several handsets belonging to family members which are no longer in use. These could be turned into easy cash by recycling.

There are now many websites offering mobile phone recycling. You enter your phone make and model and whether it is working or not and they give you a price. Or they could make a similar donation to charity (Children in Need this year are encouraging people to recycle their phones in order to help them).

However, be aware that may of these phones could end up in Nigeria or China, hotspots for cyber crime and fraud, and make sure that you delete all of your information from the phone memory.

This does not mean simply clicking on the "delete" button on your phone. Your mobile phone memory works in the same way as a computer hard drive. When you click to delete the data is not actually deleted but that portion of memory is available to be overwritten in due course.

A recent problem with a camera memory card which had apparently deleted some photos in error turned up 417 photos which were recovered using a bit of free software downloaded from the internet.

If you are thinking of recycling your phone make sure you use software to wipe the memory. Apart from embarrassing photos and texts there could be bank details, addresses and other info useful to fraudsters.