Android Factory Reset Leaves Personal Data on Phone

[henrytcasey]

If you've ever sold or given away a secondhand Android device, your personal details and account login information may have been exposed.

Android Factory Reset Leaves Personal Data on Phone : Read more

 

[f-14]

it's getting to be like hard disk drives and motherboard bios's because of the built in keylogger chip mandated by the us government decades ago, you simply must destroy them physically to the point they can not be repaired. 20# sledge hammers work great wonders.

 

[Turb0Yoda]

I wonder if they tested with a Custom Recovery(TWRP, CWM, Phillz, Safestrap, etc). My assumption is the same. My routine follows a full wipe two or three times and then restoring a stock factory image onto the phone... Then flashing the Recovery and a new ROM

 

[infernocy]

Thats why i dont have personal info on my phone , i have one gmail specifically for the phone , and i backup the images and delete them from the phone..., i worry more about losing my phone and having gmail open than this .....

 

[captaincharisma]

its is basically the same as a hard drive.its the same when resetting any apple products too. some people recommend just let the video cam running when up againced a wall or something and let it record until it runs out of memory.this is nothing but another biased article by an apple fanboy

 

[njoy]

But the BEST PART of it is that it wipes the SD card. This is a long known issue, I remember having to manually wipe all the data from the phones people brought in for sale back when I was working at CEX in London. And the best example was my dad restoring his phone to factory settings having copied the contacts over onto the SD card, but not taking it out before the wipe. Guess which part of the storage was wiped and which stayed as it was? Yep.

 

[hst101rox]

But the BEST PART of it is that it wipes the SD card. This is a long known issue, I remember having to manually wipe all the data from the phones people brought in for sale back when I was working at CEX in London. And the best example was my dad restoring his phone to factory settings having copied the contacts over onto the SD card, but not taking it out before the wipe. Guess which part of the storage was wiped and which stayed as it was? Yep.

I did a factory rest on an older Android phone, version 2.3 or something like that. The SD card wan't wiped. It was reformatted. So I used Recuva or another free recovery software and got all the pictures, videos back.
So be careful, be sure the SD card really is wiped if you want to sell it.

 

[TunaSoda]

This is news?

 

[Downpayment Blues]

I can factory reset a phone with 3 swings of a ball peen hammer. No I wont sell my phones, nor put them in the trash in such a way someone could steal the info. Until phone manufacturers quit using flash my ball peen hammer will be busy.

 

[hst101rox]

Ball peen hammer and then e-cycle it

 

[ericburnby]

its is basically the same as a hard drive.its the same when resetting any apple products too. some people recommend just let the video cam running when up againced a wall or something and let it record until it runs out of memory.this is nothing but another biased article by an apple fanboy

Not the same as Apple at all. Apple has used on-device hardware encryption since the iPhone 3GS. Android is still stuck in the last century with software based encryption, that you have to specifically enable and which causes a performance hit.

When you wipe an iOS device the data doesn't get erased - the encryption key does. So you have data there, but it's encrypted basically making it useless.

 

[bikerepairman1]

I don't sell a phone. When a phone is discarded, I remove the battery (properly disposing it) and use a hammer on the rest and make sure to have at least bashed the memory and rom to pieces before throwing it in the recycle station nearby. (separate bin for old phones)

 

[everygamer]

Likely changing your passwords after you wipe and get rid of your phone would resolve the issue too, they could brute force the password stored in the phone, but the phone wouldn't be able to then login to the remote accounts with those credentials because they would have been changed.

 

[targetdrone]

Since it's impossible to plug these security flaws because manufactures and carriers don't release new versions of Android for older devices I think I will adopt the security policy of using my Note II until it is completely dead or 4.3 simply no longer works, then vaporize it with thermite and never buy another android device again.

Imaging having to buy a new computer hardware to patch a Windows security flaw.