Clear your personal data before the tow truck comes

A junk car leaves your driveway, but what it remembers about you may go with it. The FTC’s technology staff put it plainly in 2024: people should wipe the data on their cars before selling them, as they would before reselling a computer or a phone. That applies to a car headed for scrap as much as one going to a new driver. It fits in at step 4 of our guide to selling a junk car, alongside emptying the glove box.

What your car may be holding

The FTC’s consumer alert, Selling your car? Clear your personal data first, lists what a car’s system can store:

• phone contacts and an address book, copied over when you paired your phone
• log-in details for apps, and data those apps gathered
• music and other content on a built-in hard drive
• addresses and routes in the navigation system, including home and work
• garage door codes for your home or office

Connected cars can collect more sensitive data still, such as location, and the same 2024 FTC piece warns that it could be used to stalk people.

Seven steps, in this order

1. Get power to the dashboard. A junk car often has a flat battery, and a dark screen can’t be reset. A jump start or a charged battery pack may wake the system long enough. Accessory mode is usually enough; the engine doesn’t need to run.
2. Delete paired phones. In the car’s phone or Bluetooth menu, remove every phone listed, not just yours. Then forget the car in your own phone’s Bluetooth settings, so it stops trying to connect.
3. Clear the navigation. Delete saved home and work addresses, favorites and recent destinations.
4. Erase the garage door buttons. If your car has HomeLink buttons, HomeLink’s own instructions say to hold the two outer buttons for about 10 seconds, until the indicator light changes from solid to blinking, and recommend clearing them before you sell a car. Button layouts differ, so check the owner’s manual if yours look different.
5. Run the factory reset, if the car has one. The FTC adds that a reset may still leave work to do, which is what the last two steps are for.
6. Remove the car from the maker’s app. If an app on your phone can lock, start or locate the car, take the car off your account there and on the maker’s website.
7. Cancel or move subscriptions, such as satellite radio, a Wi-Fi hotspot or a connected-car data plan.

For your car’s exact menus, the FTC points to the owner’s manual, the dealer and the maker’s website.

When the screen won’t come on at all

Some cars we buy are burned, flooded or too far gone to power up. You can still do the part that reaches beyond the car: steps 6 and 7 work from your phone or a computer. If the car had built-in garage buttons you couldn’t erase, clear the remotes your garage door opener has learned; its manual explains how. That way a code left in the car no longer opens anything.

Where the car goes next

Once it’s towed, the car is taken apart for metal and reusable parts, as our guide to recycled car parts explains. Don’t assume every screen and module gets crushed along with the frame. Clearing it yourself is the only way to know it’s done.

Moving soon as well? Our guide to shipping or selling an old car before a move covers the rest of the timing. When the car is ready, ask us for an offer; the tow is free and you’re paid at pickup.