ras-putin Posted May 9, 2013 Share Posted May 9, 2013 I realize this may seem a silly question to those who are very tech-oriented, so bear with me.I have a router I am planning to sell. Is there any way that data that has been received or transmitted from the router can be stored in its memory?There have been various reports over the years about how personal data, including passwords, was still retrievable on electronics gear (like mobile phones) that had been acquired second-hand.Do I need to be concerned with a used router? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chmod1337 Posted May 9, 2013 Share Posted May 9, 2013 Data that get transmitted has to stay in volatile memory, because the non volatile flash storage in routers is very limited concerning write cycles.The non volatile memory stores firmware and more important your settings.Those settings include your router/wifi password (most likely in form of a hash), which could be interesting if you used it elsewhere.Also the settings can include credentials for your internet provider.Make sure you wipe them, and maybe make a firmware update (which usually wipes the memory) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boomer Posted May 10, 2013 Share Posted May 10, 2013 Firmware updates usually preserve user settings, including Wi-Fi passwords and ISP passwords. You can perform a hard reset on the router to clean all settings and restore to factory default. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ras-putin Posted May 10, 2013 Author Share Posted May 10, 2013 Thanks for the replies.I actually emailed customer support for the manufacturer, and the person who responded said that no data is saved when you do a factory reset.However, I don't really trust that the frontline person responding to customer service inquiries really knows.What I've been worried about is whether factory resets could leave data behind similar to how "deleting" data on a hard drive in Windows is not the same as wiping data from a hard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingpickle Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 Do a factory reset then enter some bogus config data and save that (it's what I do when I sell them). That should be enough. If you're still worried, dont bother selling it. Your piece of mind is probably worth more than the cash you'll get for a used router. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stumpy Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 No data other than your configuration data would be stored on the router. A factory reset should take care of that as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts