Deletion ≠ Disappearance: New National Standard Eliminates the Risk of Personal Information Privacy "Resurrection"
2025-12-13 / Read about 0 minute
Author:小编   

In recent years, the "trade-in for new" initiatives and the second-hand market for electronic products have witnessed rapid growth. Consequently, a substantial number of old mobile phones and computers have found their way into recycling channels. Nevertheless, if the personal information stored on these devices—such as user photos and contact lists—is not thoroughly erased, it can readily result in privacy violations. Conventional deletion techniques, like "deleting files" or "restoring to factory settings," frequently fall short of completely wiping data. The system simply flags the data as "overwritable," while the original data continues to reside in the flash memory and can be retrieved using specialized software. For instance, a security laboratory tested 50 second-hand mobile phones that had undergone a "factory reset" and discovered that 84% of them could recover photos, 76% could retrieve contact lists, and 62% could recover fragments of chat records. To tackle this issue, the Cyberspace Administration of China has put forward, overseen the approval of, and released a mandatory national standard titled "Data Security Technology - Technical Requirements for Information Erasure in Electronic Products." This standard is set to officially come into effect on January 1, 2027. It marks the first mandatory standard to set unified requirements for information erasure techniques and processes in devices such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, and hard drives. The objective is to standardize the technical approaches for information erasure in electronic products, guide recyclers in implementing robust information erasure management and technical measures, avert data leakage risks in second-hand circulation, and foster the healthy and orderly development of the second-hand electronic product trading sector.