Handing down your old phone to a child without handing over your photos

You’ve upgraded, and the old phone still works perfectly. It’s an obvious first phone for a child, or a game device for a younger one. The temptation is to delete a few apps, clear the photos and hand it over. The trouble is that an old phone is still you: your account, your cloud photos, your messages, your saved payments, all a tap away. A child doesn’t need to be snooping to find them. They only need to open the photos app.

What to do now

1. Take what you want from it. Make sure your photos are on your new phone or in your backup, and export anything that lives only on the old phone. Vault apps and private space keep their files to themselves, so export from each one. See what a factory reset erases on Android.

2. Take out the memory card. Many phones don’t erase a removable card during a reset. Keep it, or erase it separately.

3. Sign out of your accounts. On Android, remove your account under Settings, then Accounts (or Passwords & accounts). On iPhone, sign out of your account in Settings before erasing, which also turns off the find-my-device lock. Signing out first stops reset protection from blocking the phone later.

4. Factory reset. On Android, it’s usually under Settings, then System, then Reset options, then Erase all data. On iPhone, it’s Settings, then General, then Transfer or Reset iPhone, then Erase All Content and Settings. A reset erases everything on the phone and can take up to an hour, so charge it first.

5. Remove it from your account. In your account’s list of devices, remove the old phone so it no longer appears as yours.

6. Set it up as the child’s phone. Use the child’s own account, created and managed through your platform’s family or parental controls. That lets you approve apps, set screen time and keep purchases under your control, without their phone touching your data.

7. Turn on a screen lock. Even for a young child, a simple PIN means a lost phone isn’t an open one.

What doesn’t help

• Deleting photos from the gallery. If you’re still signed in, the photo app shows your cloud library, and deleted photos wait in the trash for weeks.
• Logging out of one app at a time. It’s easy to miss one, and saved passwords or a payment wallet may remain.
• Keeping your account “just for the app store”. Purchases, backups and photo sync come along with it.
• Skipping the reset because it’s only a game device. Children grow, and the device gets used for more than games.

If a child already has it

If the phone has been in a child’s hands while still signed in to your accounts, it’s worth checking what’s been synced or shared. Look in your cloud photo account for photos from the old phone, and check your account’s device list and recent activity. Then follow the steps above.

For the opposite situation, a child using your current phone for a few minutes, see a child playing games on your phone. Selling instead of handing down? See selling your old phone.

Where a vault helps

Silo, coming soon to iPhone and Android, keeps its vault only inside the app on the phone it’s on, so a reset erases it. Before you reset, use Export everything to save a copy, then import it on your new phone. Once Silo’s encrypted backup arrives with launch, you’ll also be able to restore the vault on a new phone with your recovery phrase.