Regenersis, a European mobile phone recycling and reuse provider, is urging businesses to wipe handsets clean before sending them for recycling, BusinessGreen reports.

In 2008, the company processed more than 2 million handsets for reuse and recycling.

Last December Regenersis studied a random sample of 2,000 handsets that it processed for recycling and reuse and found that 99 percent of them contained some sort of personal data – and in some cases, sensitive information such as bank details, addresses, and confidential e-mails.