You may think that when you do a factory reset (Hard Reset) and agree to wipe everything on your Android device, all your data will be destroyed forever. But you are wrong.
As many researchers have discovered, data can be recovered using the right tools, even after a factory reset has been performed. This is because when you delete something, the file itself is not actually overwritten - the system simply discards all the information from the file, using the free space you have.
The extracted data could be a real privacy issue if you ever plan to sell or lend your Android smartphone. There are, however, several ways to ensure that your data is truly erased permanently.
Encrypting smartphone data
Encrypting Android device data is the strongest way to prevent data from being recovered. By encrypting device data, you are essentially mixing up all the data and locking it with a special key. Encrypted data cannot be retrieved without entering the passcode.
Google requires most devices to have Android control 6.0 Marshmallow (with the possible exception of some budget devices) have mandatory encryption to ensure maximum security.
If your device is running Android 5.0 Lollipop or lower (and supports encryption), then it is highly recommended that you enable encryption (Settings > Security > Encrypt device) to secure your data before doing a factory reset (The path to encryption settings may vary on different devices).
By performing a reset, you will essentially erase encrypted data that is virtually unrecoverable.
Overwriting smartphone memory with other data
After you have encrypted the data on your smartphone, performed a factory reset and erased everything that was in the device’s memory, you can be sure that all data has been destroyed and is definitely not recoverable. Overwriting memory with other useless data will help with this.
To do this, log into the cleaned smartphone, but this time do not log into any Google accounts or anything like that. Once your device is up and running as new, go ahead and start recording videos for as long as you can in the most high resolution. Repeat as many times as you need to fill all the available space.
Then do another factory reset.
Repetition
If you're a little paranoid about security, you can follow the tips above and run them several times until you're sure the data is sufficiently encrypted and overwritten with new data. At the same time, even if someone is able to recover the data, they will not receive anything useful. But if you do not have state secrets, one cycle of the actions described above should be enough for you, after which you can safely transfer the smartphone to other people.
For many, a tablet or smartphone is not just a means of communication, but also a storage of personal files and data: a notepad, diary, task manager, photo album and even wallet. What kind of secrets do people not trust with their devices: from intimate photos and correspondence to confidential papers and passwords from bank accounts.
It is not surprising that Android allows you to copy personal information to the cloud for convenient transfer to new gadgets and completely erase it on old ones. Lifehacker's instructions will help you cope with these tasks. It's based on pure Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but if you're using a different version of the system, these tips will also work. Although some menus and options may vary slightly.
Gadgets with Android 5.0 and above latest versions OSes automatically copy most user data and settings to Google servers. These are the interface parameters and Wi-Fi networks, contacts, list installed programs and even internal data from some of these programs. This feature greatly simplifies the transition to a new device. You simply connect your account to it - and copies of old data are downloaded there from the Internet.
To use backup, you must enable it in settings. To do this, find the section responsible for recovery and reset. Open it, select Google account to store data and settings, and then enable backup and auto-recovery.
Next, connect to the Internet and wait 30 minutes for it to happen backup. IN Android process duplicates settings and data Google applications, synchronized with the account you selected. The system will also copy data to the cloud third party programs, whose developers have implemented support for backup via Google. You can quickly restore all this on a new gadget.
If your device has an outdated Android system or you are not sure whether the backup covers important files, make copies of them manually.
Connect your phone to your computer in file storage mode and view the contents of the gadget in Explorer. Save important pictures, music, books, videos and other information from your device to your computer. As alternative option you can duplicate the information in Dropbox or another.
In the future, you will be able to manually copy information saved on your computer or in the cloud to a new device.
3. Remove SD and SIM cards
Your phone number It is gradually taking on the role of a universal identifier for a wide variety of services, so it would be a shame to lose it. After demonstrating the capabilities of the smartphone to the buyer, do not forget to take out your SIM card. The same goes for the memory card, especially if your device was sold without it by default.
If you want to leave the memory card to the new owner as a bonus or because it was included in the standard package, be sure to erase it before selling it. To do this, open the phone settings and find the corresponding item in the storage section.
After you have backed up your important data and cleared your memory card, you should delete all data from your device. The fastest and most reliable way to do this is to return to factory settings. As a result, your phone or tablet will be the same as it was when it arrived in the store.
To perform a reset, connect the device to a power source and use the appropriate option in the device settings. For example, on pure Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, the required item is located in the “Recovery and reset” section and is called “Factory reset”.
After the reset, your phone will reboot, and you will see that it has become pristine and immaculate.
But if you tinkered with the firmware, this will not return the factory version. In this case, you may need to flash the device with factory firmware, which can usually be found on the manufacturer's website.
When all of the above steps are completed, you can transfer the device to a new user without fear for personal data.
Buying a new smartphone once a year (and for some more often) has become the norm. In this case, the old device, as a rule, is passed on to other family members or sold. In this article, you will learn how to best prepare your Android for transfer to a new owner. It is hardly possible to return a smartphone to its original appearance without replacing parts, but restoring the software to its original form is not at all difficult.
Step 1: Back up important data
Active users mobile gadgets They quickly accumulate personal photographs, documents, notes, books and other important data that you don’t want to lose. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is move them to a safe place. This can be done different ways, each of which can be devoted to a separate article. But the following sequence of actions can be proposed as one of the options.
1. Sync your address book, mail and calendar with their respective Google services. This is the easiest way to transfer them to a new Android device.
2. Create backups installed programs and their data. To do this, you can use both the popular Titanium Backup and free program Easy Backup & Restore, which will additionally help you backup your SMS messages, call logs, dictionary and bookmarks. You can choose an external SD card or a cloud service as the archive storage location.
3. Connect your smartphone to your computer and copy from the internal and external memory devices music files, videos, photos and other user data that you want to save.
Step 2: Clear the memory card
If you decide to leave the memory card in your smartphone, be sure to make sure that there is no data left on it. We hope that before completely wiping the SD memory, you have backed up the necessary data, as described in the first step of this instruction.
1. Open your device settings.
2. Go to the "Memory" section.
3. Click on the “Clear SD” item.
However, simply erasing regular means the system may not be enough because the files you deleted can be recovered if desired using special programs. Therefore, it is advisable to use the services of one of the utilities that can repeatedly overwrite free space, leaving no chance for recovering your information - for example, Secure Wipe.
Step 3. Factory reset or flashing
This is a very important step, which you should proceed to only if you are sure that you have backup copies of your applications, documents, passwords, messages, settings and other things you need. After this operation, your smartphone will return to the same state in which it was released by the manufacturer.
1 . Open your smartphone's settings.
2 . Go to the "Backup and Reset" section.
3 . Tap on the “Reset settings” item.
4 . You will be shown a warning about deleting all existing data, which you must agree to by clicking on the “Reset phone settings” button.
Separately, it is necessary to dwell on the case when you installed any third-party firmware on your smartphone. It would be best to inform the potential buyer about this and get his opinion. If he agrees to use your firmware, then you can simply reset the settings, as described above. If the buyer wants to return the manufacturer's firmware, then you will have to download and install the factory ROM on the device. You probably know how to do this if you have already installed custom firmware.
For many, a tablet or smartphone is not just a means of communication, but also a storage of personal files and data: a notepad, diary, task manager, photo album and even wallet. What kind of secrets do people not trust with their devices: from intimate photos and correspondence to confidential papers and passwords from bank accounts.
It is not surprising that Android allows you to copy personal information to the cloud for convenient transfer to new gadgets and completely erase it on old ones. Lifehacker's instructions will help you cope with these tasks. It's based on pure Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but if you're using a different version of the system, these tips will also work. Although some menus and options may vary slightly.
Gadgets running Android 5.0 and newer OS versions automatically copy most user data and settings to Google servers. These are interface parameters and Wi-Fi networks, contacts, a list of installed programs, and even internal data of some of these programs. This feature greatly simplifies the transition to a new device. You simply connect your account to it - and copies of old data are downloaded there from the Internet.
To use backup, you must enable it in settings. To do this, find the section responsible for recovery and reset. Open it, select a Google account to store your data and settings, and then enable backup and auto-recovery.
Next, connect to the Internet and wait 30 minutes for the backup to occur. During the process, Android will duplicate the settings and data of Google applications synchronized with the account you selected. The system will also copy data from third-party programs whose developers have implemented support for backup via Google to the cloud. You can quickly restore all this on a new gadget.
If your device has an outdated Android system or you are not sure whether the backup covers important files, make copies of them manually.
Connect your phone to your computer in file storage mode and view the contents of the gadget in Explorer. Save important pictures, music, books, videos and other information from your device to your computer. As an alternative, you can duplicate the information in Dropbox or another.
In the future, you will be able to manually copy information saved on your computer or in the cloud to a new device.
3. Remove SD and SIM cards
Your phone number is gradually becoming a universal identifier for a variety of services, so it would be a shame to lose it. After demonstrating the capabilities of the smartphone to the buyer, do not forget to take out your SIM card. The same goes for the memory card, especially if your device was sold without it by default.
If you want to leave the memory card to the new owner as a bonus or because it was included in the standard package, be sure to erase it before selling it. To do this, open the phone settings and find the corresponding item in the storage section.
After you have backed up your important data and cleared your memory card, you should delete all data from your device. The fastest and most reliable way to do this is to return to factory settings. As a result, your phone or tablet will be the same as it was when it arrived in the store.
To perform a reset, connect the device to a power source and use the appropriate option in the device settings. For example, on pure Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, the required item is located in the “Recovery and reset” section and is called “Factory reset”.
After the reset, your phone will reboot, and you will see that it has become pristine and immaculate.
But if you tinkered with the firmware, this will not return the factory version. In this case, you may need to flash the device with factory firmware, which can usually be found on the manufacturer's website.
When all of the above steps are completed, you can transfer the device to a new user without fear for personal data.
In recent years, many people have begun to buy new smartphones very often. Wherein old smartphone, almost always, is either given to members of his family, or simply sold. Today’s article will tell you how best to prepare your Android smartphone for sale and transfer it to the new owner. Appearance It is impossible to change a smartphone without new parts, but with the interface and internal memory everything is much simpler.
1. Back up important data
For this article, we chose the simplest and fastest method. To do this, you need to perform a number of simple steps.
Mail synchronization, address book, calendar and other data with specialized Google services. This method is the simplest and in a fast way data transfer to new Android smartphone.
Making backups installed applications and data. For these purposes, you can use programs such as: Titanium Backup or Easy Backup & Restore. You can choose a memory card or one of the cloud storages as a place to save data.
We connect the smartphone to the PC and copy all video, audio files, as well as photos and the data that you want to save from the internal and external memory of your device.
2. Format the memory card (erase all data)
If you sell a smartphone along with an external memory card, you need to make sure that your personal data is not left on it. Before you perform the steps to clear the memory card, you should follow the steps from the first point.
Using Samsung as an example Galaxy Note 2 To reset to factory settings, you can do this:
1.Go to the device settings.
2.Go to the “Options” tab and click on the “Memory” item.
3.Select “Format.” SD memory card."
Many may think that this is enough, but for a complete cleaning of the memory card without the possibility of further file recovery using special utilities you need to use a program called Secure Wipe. The program allows you to repeatedly overwrite free space, giving no chance of recovering deleted information.
3. Factory reset or flashing
If you have completed the two points above, then you should move on to the last, most serious point. After the following actions that you perform with your smartphone, you can get exactly the same state of the device as it was at the time of purchase.
1.Go to settings.
3.Click on the “Data reset” item.
4.We agree with the warning about complete cleaning data and reset to factory settings by clicking on the “Reset device” button.
If your device does not have official firmware, and third-party, then you should inform the future buyer and if he is satisfied with everything, then do only a complete collection of data. But if the buyer needs official firmware from the manufacturer, then you will have to flash the factory ROM on the device yourself. Surely you already know how to do this, since you have modified (custom) firmware installed. If you don’t remember or don’t know how to do this, then we advise you to follow the link to the 4pda forum, select the model of your smartphone, carefully study the instructions and start the firmware process.
Happy shopping and selling!
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