# How secure is a factory reset on androids?



## Jon-of-arc (Nov 4, 2013)

Esepcially the samsung and nexus ones, running jelly bean?

Could google recover your data, if they got hold of your phone and where bored?  Obviously they could have a fair stab if they knew your google ID and looked at their serves.  But with just a phat processer and their knowledge of the OS?  

What about law enforcement?  Dodgy second hand phone shops?  1337 hackers who've managed to get murdochs samsung s5?

I need to knows!


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## joustmaster (Nov 4, 2013)

Factory reset is just there to put the os files back to default. It's not really there to erase all your crimes. 

I don't think it even deletes the stuff on the memory card area.


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## bmd (Nov 4, 2013)

You mean could they recover information from the phone's internal memory card? Yes, they could.


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## editor (Nov 4, 2013)

bmd said:


> You mean could they recover information from the phone's internal memory card? Yes, they could.


Not if you encrypt the phone and then erase the memory.


> Now, on Android, you have two options for wiping your phone: you can either do a factory reset (located in different places depending on your phone, but should be under something like "Backup & reset") which will wipe everything you've ever stored in any user-accessible area of storage. For most people, this will be enough to ensure that no one will be able to access data you've ever stored.
> 
> How effective a basic wipe is can depend on how well the manufacturer implemented its factory wipe. When we spoke to jcase, he said that some manufacturers' methods can still leave behind recoverable data. Additionally, if you root your phone and use a custom recovery, wiping via the recovery might not do everything properly.
> 
> ...


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## bmd (Nov 4, 2013)

editor said:


> Not if you encrypt the phone and then erase the memory.



Good to know.


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## Jon-of-arc (Nov 4, 2013)

joustmaster said:


> Factory reset is just there to put the os files back to default. It's not really there to erase all your crimes.
> 
> I don't think it even deletes the stuff on the memory card area.



I'm not concerned about the rozzas. But what about a 3rd party with significant technical expertise? How long would it take them? How hard would they have to look?


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## joustmaster (Nov 4, 2013)

Jon-of-arc said:


> I'm not concerned about the rozzas. But what about a 3rd party with significant technical expertise? How long would it take them? How hard would they have to look?


I can pull a load of files off a blank USB memory stick in about 20mins, if they have just been deleted. 

I guess that's all a factory reset does.


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## editor (Nov 4, 2013)

joustmaster said:


> I can pull a load of files off a blank USB memory stick in about 20mins, if they have just been deleted.
> 
> I guess that's all a factory reset does.


Read the link I posted above.


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## joustmaster (Nov 4, 2013)

editor said:


> Read the link I posted above.


What, to encrypt then wipe? 
That wasn't the question he asked me, and that I was answering.


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## editor (Nov 4, 2013)

joustmaster said:


> What, to encrypt then wipe?
> That wasn't the question he asked me, and that I was answering.


No, it says that some manufacturers' hard reset does effectively remove the data, but not all.


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## joustmaster (Nov 4, 2013)

editor said:


> No, it says that some manufacturers' hard reset does effectively remove the data, but not all.


 It implies that the data is removed in a similar way to just deleting it all. (unless you encrypt it, but that wasn't the question) 

I was saying that I can recover wiped data from flash memory very easily.


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## Tankus (Nov 7, 2013)

Worth doing though......done mine twice now ........ I find that when the crud builds up ..you tube starts to stutter .....too much sucking on the 1gb memory,  methinks.......so easy to get back with all the cloud drives and Google account , which doesn't get deleted.


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