IMAGE CREDIT: Antoni Shkraba Studio / Pexels

When it comes to selling or disposing of phones and computers, simply deleting personal files or performing factory resets may not be enough to protect our data from hackers.

A study by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky found 90 percent of second-hand devices contained leftover sensitive information, such as passwords, medical files or tax documents.

However there are steps to protect and discard personal data responsibly.

4ZZZ's Toni Pankaluic spoke with Ritesh Chugh, an Associate Professor in Information and Communications Technology at Central Queensland University Australia to find out these protective steps as well as exploring the current situation involving device data breaching.

For a deep dive...

Here is a list of software to help safely protect and/or remove data from your devices:

- Android (Shreddit)

- Apple (FileVault)

- Windows (Bitlocker)