Recycling company e-Cycle has had more than a...

its operations, he said. The company is “rapidly hiring phone sorters,” data security specialists and quality assurance personnel for its operations facility in Hilliard, Ohio, Paulie Anthony, director-marketing, told us. E-Cycle also expanded its customer service department and added proprietary equipment that he said was designed for managing iOS devices. It’s also just starting to extend its services to Europe, Canada and South America “to better meet the wireless asset recovery, data security and recycling needs” of clients outside the U.S., he said. The company is also now offering individual consumers the same mobile phone buyback and data protection services that it previously offered only to corporate and government clients, it said. Also new is a consumer mobile buyback site that it launched at www.e-CycleYourMobile.com, after receiving frequent requests from enterprise clients to provide a secure way their employees could sell their individually owned devices, it said. The site gives consumers the ability to quickly sell iPhones and BlackBerry, Android and other types of wireless devices, said Irion. Devices bought via the site receive the same “thorough data sanitization services” that e-Cycle provides its enterprise and government clients, it said. Some rival consumer buyback companies claim to offer data deletion services, but nearly all of them state at their websites that it’s the responsibility of the seller to delete their private information, said e-Cycle. A large percentage of mobile devices that arrive at the e-Cycle facility still contain sensitive data, even after they were reported to be wiped prior to shipping, it said. Of the devices received at the facility, e-Cycle’s data security department reported that 55 percent of devices had SIM cards containing sensitive information and one in five devices had SD memory cards with access to private files, it said. The company hires third-party “forensic auditors on a quarterly basis to test random samples” of its mobile phones and validate its data removal processes, said Irion. The company, in January 2012, became the first e-Stewards certified mobile buyback and recycling company globally, it said. E-Cycle had recycled more than 12 million mobile phones and kept more than 250,000 tons of toxic waste out of landfills as of late April. That has since expanded to just under 12.9 million devices being recycled and just under 255,000 tons of e-waste being kept out of landfills, said Anthony. Since January, the company has recycled more than 205,000 lithium-ion mobile phone batteries, he said.