Need to reset all passwords, or remote wipe

[evade]

Hello

My wife has just sold her Macbook Pro (late 2012) on Ebay, but forgot to wipe any of her data. The Mac is on its way to the buyer and arrives on Monday morning. Thankfully there is enough time to reset every password she has, but I'm wondering if there is a better/easier solution. There are two user accounts on the Mac and we will obviously need to give the buyer one of them so they can log onto the Mac. I'd rather not do that if possible.

Some questions:

1. Are there any instructions I can give the new owner to reset the Mac completely without giving them a password?
2. It looks like the new buyer could bypass the account passwords anyway and get to the data on the Mac anyway, by going into safe mode, terminal, and resetting passwords from there. Is that the case?
3. Find my Mac was not enabled, I guess there is no way to do anything remotely other than that?
4. Any other options to protect data? Or any other considerations?

None of the files on the Mac have sensitive data, thankfully. So resetting passwords should do most things, if we can be methodical about it.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Thanks

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Since the Mac has already shipped, and Find My Mac is not enabled, then you really only have one alternative. I assume you created an admin account for the buyer before shipping, correct? If so, you can instruct them to simply login to that user and delete your wife's user using the Erase home folder securely option.. All of her documents and passwords will be deleted and not retrievable.

OS X Yosemite: Delete a user

The steps outlined in that article work for most recent versions of OS X.

C

 

[evade]

Thanks Cory.

No, there was no account created, she just put it in the box and posted it!

So I'm guessing the only option we have to change all passwords and hope for the best that we catch everything!

 

[Cory Cooper]

They can create their own admin account and then follow the steps that are outlined in that article. Did you give them an account password? If not, they will not be able to use the Mac without performing a complete erase & install.

C

 

[evade]

Is it possible to do a complete erase and install with the OSX disks? Assume they would need those on an external device?

Thanks again Cory.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Yes, they can do an erase & install. Since it is a 2012 model, it didn't come with discs, so they would need to use the Recovery Partition install option.

OS X: About OS X Recovery

Iy would be easier to give them the computer login password, have them create an admin account, login to it, and erase the other account securely. I would guess that most people would be willing to do that. You could also instruct them to take it to an Apple Store and have them restore it to a factory install of OS X.

C

 

[Mmember]

I think the best thing to do is ask the buyer to return the computer. Then wipe it and send it back. Pay for their shipping of course and maybe include a little $ to make up for their inconvenience/disappointment.