Disposal of old Cell phones

[[AK]Clay]

What's the best avenue to unload your old cell phone? Donation programs make me nervous, since the phones have not been wiped/reset and I don't know how. Or is that an unfounded paranoia?

[[AK]Nuts]

We tried donating recently and the women's shelter said that they used to but the cost of dealing with re-activation, old batteries, sorting out broken phones, wiping memory etc., just wasn't worth it.

I find that duct taping it to a cardboard box with wires sticking out of it and leaving it outside of city hall is a pretty good way of making it someone else's problem to deal with.

Or, bring four of five of them with you to the airport and leave them behind at airport security on your next trip. Make a big deal out of emptying your pockets, then dump out 5 phones and say, "Screw you, you take 'em" and walk off.

[[AK]Kidd]

save em for Halloween....

consider it the worst dressed award

[[AK]The Beast]

Dunno how this goes as far as privacy, but just about every Best Buy has a multi-recycle bin at the entrance. One slot for cell phones, as well as for rechargable (both Ni-Cad and Li-Ion) batteries, and a third for printer ink cartridges. Of course, the latter two don't contain your address book or any other personal info. If you can locate and remove the SIM card from the phone, and destroy it before recycling, you should be fine. Or just delete all the data manually/through your computer before recycling. It might (probably, in fact) still be recoverable, but would take a pretty herculean effort, especially when compared with the other phones in the recycle bin whose owners weren't as smart as you and didn't delete the data before ditching the phone. Sometimes the ignorance of others is your best defense....

[[AK]Clay]

Sounds like it's just as easy and useful to just trash 'em.

Speaking of cell phones, is there a technical reason why every single make seems to have it's own size power plug? Even the same manufactures are constantly switching the plug size.

[[AK]Azalyn]

It's a marketing ploy Clay. They keep changing the charging and data port, so that every time you get a new phone, you are forced to get new charging equipment. It's a way they can sell you a $5 charger for $29.99.