Thinking of selling your old cell phone on eBay? Don't think your deleted text messages and phone numbers are really gone.

Resetting the phone often means sensitive information appears to have been erased, but it can be resurrected using specialized yet inexpensive software found on the Internet.

A company, Trust Digital of McLean, Va., bought 10 different phones on eBay this summer to test phone-security tools it sells for businesses. The phones all were fairly sophisticated models capable of working with corporate e-mail systems.

Curious software experts at Trust Digital resurrected information on nearly all the used phones, including the racy exchanges between guarded lovers.

The other phones contained:

-- One company's plans to win a multimillion-dollar federal transportation contract.

-- E-mails about another firm's $50,000 payment for a software license.

-- Bank accounts and passwords.

-- Details of prescriptions and receipts for one worker's utility payments.

-- The recovered information was equal to 27,000 pages.

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EXPOSED: When a married man sold his old cell phone, he thought he'd erased all the data it held. But the guys who bought it now know a secret: He was cheating on his wife.

HARD TO ERASE: All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think.

BACK TO HAUNT YOU: The practice of resetting a phone often means sensitive information appears to have been erased. But it can be resurrected using specialized yet inexpensive software found on the Internet.

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