Disposing of routers
 

Riding proudly on the wave of good intentions sorting through one's possessions these last 2 weeks, one has come across a few pieces of electronic equipment for the local dump, where they have a sub-section for old broken electrical things. Now I know that hard drives need to be destroyed/properly wiped to preserve a level of security, but what of old routers, both wifi enabled and non ? Should I format them in some way or simply whack them satisfyingly with a stout hammer ?



SHJ

I don't believe (may be wrong) that routers contain any information that would be useful to someone else. TTBOMK, they just sit around and direct traffic.

Well, they contain limited information in the form of configuration which includes passwords.

So its pretty straightforward.... do a factory reset and job done.

Thanks for the replies, at least it is a simple effort to reset the contraptions, rather than a convoluted process, or anger-management therapy :E



SHJ

To expand upon this, if you're with BT (or any subsidiary or reseller of their services) and you have 2 routers configured with the same broadband information, whilst both will 'sync' to the broadband, only the first to connect will be able to pass traffic.

(found this out when we ordered Infinity for one customer, replaced it with a better router than the woeful business hub which we left with the customer, and the customer promptly sold the business hub on eBay :ugh:)