wipe

Let's face it: BlackBerry 10 isn't going to be for everyone. There are going to be people who have purchased a Z10 only to find out it's not the device for them, and some people might find that they prefer the Q10, which launches soon.

As such, you're going to want to securely wipe all of your information from the device. With just a few taps you'll be able to secure your data, ensuring it doesn't end up in the wrong hands.

There are a lot of tempting reasons to upgrade your phone these days. In fact, here are five of them. But what do you do with your old phone?

Well, you could turn it into a dedicated media player, or perhaps recycle it. But why not try to sell it?

Selling your old Android phone can be an easy way to make a little money. But before you let it go, you'll want to make sure you've backed up any important information and deleted any trace of your personal data. So let's walk through the process.

The … Read more

Android fragmentation affects security patches, too. Instead of waiting to see which devices have been protected against a Dialer app vulnerability discovered earlier this week, Lookout Mobile Security (download) has stepped into the breach with a patch for it today. So far, it's the only known Android security app to block the exploit, but even Lookout's patch requires initial user input.

The vulnerability allowed some Samsung phones to be remotely wiped from the Dialer app, the "phone" part of your smartphone. While Samsung pushed out a patch quickly, it's not clear if other phones have … Read more

Owners of the Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3 may be vulnerable to a flaw that could allow their personal data to be deleted from their device, a security researcher has discovered.

The malicious code, which is now circulating on the Internet, could trigger a factory reset of the popular handsets, according to Ravi Borgaonkar, a researcher in the Security in Communications department at Technical University Berlin, who demonstrated the vulnerability at the Ekoparty security conference in Argentina last week (see video below).

The flaw lies in the way Samsung's TouchWiz UI interacts with unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) codes, … Read more

A number of Samsung smartphones have been found to be vulnerable to a remote factory reset, according to details surfacing today. The hack, which was detailed at a recent Ekoparty security conference, shows that the Galaxy S3 is susceptible to the simple reset.… Read more

When you delete a file from your system, it's gone, right? If you used the delete method built into Windows, it's not gone from your disk until it's overwritten by other data, and even then it's recoverable. To purge a file from your PC, you need a stronger tool, one that offers secure delete methods and multiple overwriting paths. Secure Wipe is a free tool that makes it easy to delete single or multiple files and folders and be confident that they are gone.

Secure Wipe's user interface is very plain--just two entry fields, one … Read more

If you're paranoid about getting your Samsung Galaxy device stolen or losing it, Samsung has a great free service that should help you feel more at ease.

The service, called SamsungDive, allows you to track, lock, ring, and wipe your Galaxy tablets remotely. Galaxy smartphone owners can also forward calls/messages and retrieve call logs. Here's how:

Step 1: Check to see if you have one of the supported Samsung Galaxy devices. SamsungDive currently supports the Galaxy SII, Galaxy R, Galaxy W, Galaxy y, Galaxy y Pro, Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Step 2: … Read more

Erasing an SSD (solid-state drive) not only sanitizes the drive, but recovers lost performance on systems with inefficient garbage collection. Utilities like CCleaner or DBAN are made for magnetic disk drives and won't work on SSDs. Fortunately, there are two free secure-erase utilities that do work with SSD drives.

The first utility is named Secure Erase (HDDErase.exe), and was developed by the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California, San Diego. It's free and effective, but requires DOS boot media. The biggest problem with Secure Erase, however, is that development ended in 2008, thus … Read more

We know school's already in session for most kids, but it's still September, so it's not too late to do a back-to-school-related post. At least we hope we're not too tardy.

Anyway, we spotted these school-themed tablet/smartphone "smart" Toddy cloths on the company's Web site and were mildly amused. They're made out of premium microfiber that's treated with a microbe shield, have a plush side to clean and silk side to polish, and are machine washable in cold water. A single Toddy will run you $9.99, but if you … Read more