Clean up your Mac for Sale

Clean up your Mac for Sale
Mac Tip#72/18-Sept-2002

One of my clients emailed me:

I recently purchased a second hand Mac from a guy. He did not do a great job in clearing his history from his Internet site visits — a lot of which I did not really need to know about! Made me think. You hear that it can be easy to see people’s history — both internet and email. I receive a lot of emails for my work which are confidential and contain personal details on clients — and would not want others to have access to this information, should I ever sell this computer. I trash those ones after I have dealt with them, but how do I really know that they have disappeared forever? Is there a fail proof way making sure they are gone for good?

Many of us have information on our computers which we would prefer others not to access. This can include personal information relating to other people, our internet username and password, banking details, and indeed the history files of websites we’ve visited.

Many people simply trash the documents they’ve created before selling or giving away their computer, but this does a very poor job of removing personal information. If you know where to look you can often still find email messages, passwords and so on. Also check Mac Tip#34/19-Dec-2001 which explains why emptying the Trash doesn’t always work to remove a document.

When you buy a brand new Mac you always receive discs which contain the Operating System and other software. The newer Macs have CDs named something like “Software Restore”. Before disposing of your old computer you should actually wipe all data from your computer and then reinstall the software it originally came with. Be sure to first of all make a backup copy of all your own information so that you can transfer that to the new computer.

What you need to do is to start up your Mac from the original disc supplied with it. These days that means you put the Restore Software CD in the CD drive and restart the computer while holding down the letter C on the keyboard. Then just follow the instructions contained on the CD. This will allow you to reformat the drive, a process which deletes all information. After that the original Operating System and some other software will be installed. This process restores your computer to the way it was when it came from the factory.

After restarting in the normal way to make sure everything is working correctly you can now pass that computer on and be sure that your personal, confidential information is no longer present.

If you feel this whole task is too daunting or you don’t have the relevant discs then you should consult your local Mac dealer or support person for help.