Most people wouldn’t give away or sell their wireless phone without first deleting their phone book and other personal information. But you should be just as careful if your phone needs to be repaired.

When a cell phone breaks, you either take it back to the store or send it to the insurance company. In either case, you give them your broken phone and usually get a refurbished one in return. That means you get somebody else’s old phone. And eventually, somebody will get yours.
You never want to give away your phone, for any reason, if it contains personal data. You want to pull out the SIM card (if your phone has one) and do a master reset or individual resets to wipe out all the stored data.

Then go through all the menus and make sure everything is gone – the phone book, calendar, notes, and logs of your calls and text messages.

Remember, everything that has been on your phone will stay on your phone, unless you take the time to get remove it.