Why People Aren't Recycling Cell Phones

Why are cell phones ending up in landfills instead of recycling centers? Because users are afraid that private information will end up in improper hands.

Fair enough, but you can take steps to remove personal information from a phone (or any other device) before recycling it. With phones, remove the SIM card, of course, before junking the device. If you're truly recycling (and not donating for re-use), you can simply smash the thing with a hammer, which will discourage anyone from recovering data from any solid state storage on the device.

Same goes for notebooks and desktops. If a hard drive is too small to be repurposed as a secondary storage device, I remove the drive and take a few whacks at it with a sledge hammer and/or a chisel. Once you hear parts rattling around inside, you needn't worry about attempts to recover the data on it. (Though, in truth, anyone willing to spend thousands of dollars could recover the information, but your shopping list and your aunt's phone number are probably not worth the hassle.)

That said, the survey noted in the story originally linked above (the link is now dead) says that privacy worries are actually the second reason that people don't recycle them. This piece echoes those concerns. The first: "Mobile phones that users always have on them become a 'storehouse of memories.'" In other words, those cameraphone pics have sentimental value. Dealing with this is a simple matter: Simply email the pictures to yourself for permanent storage on your PC. Or, God help you, your new cell phone.

For more advice on wiping your cell phone's memory, check out this PC World story.