In recent years, with the rapid expansion of "old-for-new" and second-hand transactions of electronic products, a large number of old mobile phones and old computers have entered recycling channels. However, if personal information such as user photos and address books stored in these electronic products are not effectively cleared, it will easily lead to consumer privacy leaks. Can some of the current traditional deletion methods completely remove this personal information?

At the Cyber ​​Security Research Center of the China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute, professional technicians conducted demonstrations using electronic products that consumers often use.

Import some PDF, video, audio and picture data into a mechanical hard drive without any files, and use the system's built-in deletion function to delete it. The computer showed that all the files in the hard drive were cleared. Subsequently, the technician used a data recovery software to operate.


Gao Chentao, engineer at the Cybersecurity Research Center of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:The data is displayed in this recovery tool, like the file name, including the video content of the file. It can be seen that the conventional deletion effect is limited.

The technician then randomly took a few photos with a mobile phone and deleted the photos using the phone's own deletion program.


Gao Chentao, engineer at the Cybersecurity Research Center of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:We use a professional recovery software to try to recover the data of the pictures we just deleted. After extraction by the software, the pictures we just deleted through simple deletion can still be recovered.

Technicians said that when consumers dispose of old electronic products, they only use conventional operations such as "delete files" and "restore factory settings". In fact, in many cases, user information is not completely cleared, and the deleted data can be recovered by relying on some technical means.


Fan Kefeng, Vice President of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the total number of idle mobile phones in my country reached 6 billion, but only 10% of the idle mobile phones entered the second-hand platform for circulation. One of the main reasons is that consumers are worried about incomplete information removal and the risk of privacy leakage.

Manufacturers must provide information clearing function

The reporter learned from the National Standards Committee that the mandatory national standard "Technical Requirements for Electronic Product Information Clearance of Data Security Technology" was officially released recently and will be officially implemented on January 1, 2027. This standard was proposed and coordinated by the Cyberspace Administration of China. The main purpose of its introduction is to address consumers' concerns about data in second-hand electronic products being maliciously recovered, leading to privacy leaks.

For the first time, the standard puts forward unified requirements for the information erasure technology and processes of mobile phones, computers, tablets, hard drives and other devices in a mandatory form.


Fan Kefeng, Vice President of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:Consumers often face "three fears" when dealing with old mobile phones: fear of complicated operations, fear of not being able to delete them, and fear of non-standard recycling. Mandatory national standards provide a one-stop solution, allowing electronic product manufacturers to provide information removal methods, including built-in removal functions, free services or third-party removal tools, so consumers do not need to explore on their own.

The standards stipulate that all user data stored in electronic products must be completely cleared, including various types of files such as text, pictures, and videos; data such as call records, text messages, location, and behavior records; security data such as identity-related account numbers, passwords, and biometric information, and bound bank cards, transportation cards, access cards, and other external device information.


Fan Kefeng, Vice President of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:The technical indicators of methods such as data overwriting and block erasure are clarified, and the cleaning effect is verified through various methods such as clearing certification, identification tracing, logging, and technical testing.

Technicians demonstrated the process of clearing information on this memory card that contains a large amount of data in accordance with the requirements of the new national standard.


Li Zhuojun, engineer at the Cybersecurity Research Center of China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute:When the progress bar reaches 100%, the overwriting process officially ends. A complete overwriting is equivalent to destroying the directory structure. Then use a professional data reading tool to check that the partition where the data was originally written has been successfully cleared. Later, mobile phone manufacturers are required to also install tools similar to this kind of data overwriting and clearing into mobile phones, so that users can proactively clear data independently in the future.

Standardize the behavior of recyclers and protect information security

In addition to the requirements for electronic product manufacturers, the new national standard also specifically puts forward clear requirements for recycling operators. The standards are clear. Recyclers must clear information from second-hand electronic products and verify the effect of information removal before sale. Products without information removal must not be resold or exported. If the information cannot be completely cleared due to damage to electronic products or other reasons, the storage media must be physically destroyed. At the same time, in order to ensure that consumers can trace product information removal records, recyclers must record the removal operations in detail, including product information, removal methods, operation time, removal results, etc.; and keep the removal operation records and effect verification results for no less than 3 years.

(CCTV reporters Li Jingjing and Yang Xiaogang)