Whenever you decide to sell off your phone or any device which contains personal information then what do you do? You first take the back up all the data that you have stored in there and then delete them and to be on a safer side you turn to factory reset which ensures that it is returned to the same position when it was first purchased. This is done to ensure that you do not land up in any trouble because of some leaked pictures or information which was crucial. You have to make sure that your device is as good as new whenever you are giving it off to anybody, even if that person is your best buddy, do not leave any information back.
There are several data which you should remove without forgetting and those are –
- Your bank details like account number, PIN number, internet banking number, etc.
- Full contact details
- There are certain apps which gives you a serial number to use their service so you must also secure the number before giving away your MAC so that you can use it on your new device
When the process of backing up and disabling certain programs is so easy to perform ten why not take the advantage. Here you can follow these simple steps and make your Mac available for others –
- Go to your iTunes account first
- Now de-authorize your Mac from that
- When you have come out of the iTunes account, you now need to take the complete backup
- You can do that with the help of Time Machine or any other backup methods like Carbon Copy Cloner
- Now go to the System preferences on your iCloud
- You will find that the box beside Find My Mac is ticked, you will have to remove that
- Once you are done with that step you can sign out of the iCloud window
- The reason why full backup is required because once you uncheck the box the system will automatically wipe out the data from Mac but it will stay in the iCloud account
- Then reformatting is required to return your old Mac to the factory setting
In case of OS X Mountain Lion then you need to sign out of iMessage first
- Then in iMessage app you will have to select Preference and then from there you choose the Accounts
- Don’t forget to choose the iMessage account before signing out from there
- Now reformat the hard drive and make sure to install the OS X again
Once you are done with these steps and completed the reformatting too, then you will find the Welcome Screen coming up asking you to select the country or the region you reside in. Don’t go further and select the Command Q instead to shut down your Mac. When you find the welcome screen asking you to select a country or region that means it has gone back to factory settings and it is as good as new. Now when you retire your Mac the person will get it as new and we will be able to do all setup as per his preference.