Selling or trading in your old phone without leaving your photos on it

The new phone is on the table and the old one is going to a stranger, or a trade-in counter, or a cousin. Years of photos are on it, along with your accounts and a few documents you scanned. Someone else is about to switch it on.

Done in the right order, selling a phone is safe. The common mistakes come from skipping a step, usually the backup or the sign-out.

What to do now

1. Move what you want to keep. Set up the new phone from the old one, or copy photos, videos and files to a backup. Then open the new phone and check that the things you care about are really there. Don’t erase until you have seen them.

2. Check your cloud copies. If your photos sync to a cloud account, make sure the sync finished. Erasing the old phone doesn’t delete cloud copies, so the account is both your safety net and a place your photos still live.

3. Sign out of your accounts. Sign out of the cloud, store and messaging accounts on the old phone. On iPhone, that includes signing out of iCloud and the App Store, which also turns off the find-my-phone lock so the buyer can use it. On Android, know the password of the account on the phone, because after a reset the phone asks for it, and remove the account before resetting if you can.

4. Take out the SIM and memory card. If your phone uses an eSIM, choose to erase it as well when the phone asks.

5. Erase the phone. On iPhone, that is Settings, General, Transfer or Reset iPhone, Erase All Content and Settings. On Android, it is the factory reset option under System in Settings, and the exact path varies by maker. Both clear your photos, apps and accounts.

6. Check that it starts like new. It should show the first setup screen. If it asks for your account, sign-in wasn’t removed, so sort that before you hand it over.

7. Keep proof. For a sale, a message that says the phone was erased and handed over on a given date is enough.

If you’ve already sold the phone without erasing it, change your account passwords and remove the phone from your accounts’ device lists from another device. Our guide on before selling your phone covers the longer checklist.

What doesn’t help

• Deleting photos by hand. They can stay in the deleted folder, and other files stay too.
• Just signing out. The photos and files are still on the phone.
• Removing the SIM and stopping there. The storage is still full of your data.
• Selling it as-is because the screen lock is on. A lock protects a phone you own, not one you hand over.

Where a vault helps

While you own the phone, Silo’s encrypted vault means your private photos and files were never sitting loose in the gallery. A buyer who somehow got past an incomplete erase would find only encrypted data, not readable photos.

But the vault is stored in the app’s own storage, and the phone’s own backup doesn’t copy it. Erasing the phone, or uninstalling the app, removes it. Before you erase, either export everything, which works on every plan, or keep a backup of your vault. Encrypted backup to your own cloud storage and restore with your recovery phrase are arriving with launch. A step that matters: open the exported copy, or the restored vault on the new phone, before you wipe the old one. Moving the vault is covered in move your vault to a new phone.