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How to wipe your Android Phone completely before selling it

Thinking of selling or recycling your Android device? Make certain to delete your data so y'all're not handing personal information to a stranger. We explain how to fully wipe an Android phone or tablet.

UPDATED: Jan 20, 2022

Then a new Android telephone or tablet has just defenseless your attending, and yous are looking to upgrade to the latest one equally speedily equally possible. But what practice y'all do with your sometime device? There are a number of options bachelor. You may want to give information technology away, merchandise information technology in with your carrier, put information technology up for sale, or recycle it.

Whatever decision y'all take, information technology's of import that all your personal data is wiped make clean earlier disposing of it. You don't desire to accidentally laissez passer on your personal data to someone else. Leaving personal details on your old device may expose you to security and privacy risks.

Then, how exercise you lot properly wipe your data off your old Android device without running the risk of leaving remnant information? Is it plenty to simply delete the files or practice a factory reset?

Basic file deletion and factory reset are not enough

A lot of people perform a factory reset to wipe everything off their Android device, before disposing or reselling it.  Just the problem is, a manufactory reset doesn't really delete everything. According to a recent written report by the University of Hertfordshire in conjunction with Comparitech , it was found that it's withal possible to recover photos, emails, text and other documents from a reset Android device.

Opposite to popular conventionalities, when yous delete a file from your phone memory, SD card, or computer hard disk for that matter, the file isn't actually removed. Permanent data erasure goes beyond bones file deletion commands, which only remove direct pointers to the data disk sectors, and make data recovery possible with mutual software tools.

The operating arrangement (Android, Windows, etc) uses a concept called indexing to go along runway of where files are stored in a device. Each file on your device memory or storage has a pointer that tells the OS where the file'southward information begins and ends. It's a lot like the index page in textbooks. When you lot delete a file, the Bone removes the arrow to that file (alike to erasing folio numbers from the table of content of a textbook) and marks the sectors containing the file's data as available.

From the file organisation's point of view, the file is no longer nowadays on your storage device, and the sectors containing its data are considered free space. However, until the Bone writes new data over the sectors containing the contents of the file, the files are still recoverable. A file recovery plan tin scan the device for these deleted files and restore them.

Then if you lot are considering disposing of your old Android device, make sure you wipe your personal information the right way. In this article, we'll evidence you how to securely wipe your personal data off your old Android device before selling or recycling information technology, to ensure it doesn't have any remnant of personal data. Outlined below are v of import steps you demand to accept to securely wipe your data and counter data remanence. We'll take you through each footstep in detail.

Here's how to wipe your Android phone completely before selling:

1. Fill-in your data
2. Encrypt your data
3. Overwrite with junk data
4. Remove your accounts, SIM and memory carte
5. Perform factory reset

Backup your data

The importance of backing up everything on your phone before wiping it cannot be overemphasized.  Ideally, if Backup to Google Bulldoze is turned on, device settings, apps and app data, SMS, call history, and contacts are automatically backed up and synced with Google Drive. Otherwise, you demand to manually back them up.

Here's how to backup your data on any Android device:

• You lot don't have to worry much about backing upwards your email. You can easily recreate it on your new device. Most email setups keep copies of downloaded emails on the server. If you're not certain virtually it,  just log on to your electronic mail on another device to confirm the backups on the server.
• When it comes to apps, Google has a record of all the Android apps yous've purchased. So long as you're going to another Android device, you tin can download them once again to your new phone at no accuse. Amend still, Google can also help you sync all your apps to your account. If you don't have it already enabled, you can enable it by going to Settings >> Accounts >> Enable Automatically Sync Information . Later on that's done, motion to Settings >> Arrangement >>  Backup >> Enable Backup to Google Drive . Some apps may have their own specific cloud backup storage . Others like WhatsApp rely on Google Bulldoze, if enabled. This volition ensure all your information is gear up to be unpacked when your new phone arrives.
• 1 of the almost important things you should support is your contacts. Fortunately, Google makes it really easy to fill-in. By backing up everything to Google contacts, your contacts will follow you everywhere and sync with every new Android device. If you are non already using Google contacts, you can gear up it upwards by going to Settings >> Accounts >>  Google Account >>  Account Sync >> Enable Contacts. Please see Figure i.0 beneath.
• Another important slice of data you lot desire to backup are your photos, videos and music. There are a couple of ways to do this only the fastest and most effective is to connect your phone to your PC or Mac using the USB cablevision that came with your phone. Mac users may need to install a small app called Android File Transfer to go this working. Once connected, you'll find all of your photos and videos in a folder called DCIM, and your music files in a folder chosen Music. Now y'all can only copy those folders over to your computer.

• What near all your text letters, call logs, system settings, agenda events, playlists, browser bookmarks, etc? To dorsum upward these, yous may consider a third-party backup tool such as Backup Your Mobile or My Backup Pro , which allows yous to backup your stuff to the cloud or to your retentiveness menu and to sync information technology dorsum over to your new device.

Figure 1.0 Screenshot showing how to backup to Google contacts

Encrypt your data

Encryption renders your personal information in your device in an unreadable or scrambled format; which means that even if someone tries to restore your information, they won't be able to access information technology. This step is necessary to ensure that if by some miracle, a skilled hacker does manage to get concur of your erased data or some residue left behind subsequently a total reset, they will non be able to make sense of it. Anyone attempting to access the encrypted data will need a special fundamental (Pin, password, or lock screen blueprint) to decrypt it, which of course they don't accept.

Well-nigh Android users rarely encrypt their phone data, probably due to either ignorance or fear of performance degradation. According to an estimate , only "10 per centum of the world'southward 1.4 billion Android phones were encrypted, compared to 95 percent of all iPhones." Only these days, it seems newer Android devices come with encryption enabled by default. If your device is reasonably recent (Android six.0 and in a higher place), it should nearly certainly be encrypted by default. Just if you're getting rid of an older Android device, it might non be.

If your phone doesn't have encryption enabled past default, y'all can encrypt it manually with just a few taps:

1. For Android devices running Android 5.0, navigate to Settings >> Security >> Encryption >> Encrypt telephone . For Android 4.4 KitKat or lower, navigate to Settings > Security > Screen Lock > Encrypt phone.
2. Tap "Encrypt phone" or "Encrypt tablet", as the case may be. Please note that you lot'll be asked to plug in your phone to charge while the encryption process is going on, just to ensure that it doesn't power off and cause errors.
3. Yous'll now be prompted to set a Pin, countersign or lock screen which is needed to access your encrypted files.

Overwrite with junk information

If you want to exist absolutely certain that your personal data cannot be accessed past anyone, you tin overwrite your encrypted data with junk data, thereby making it impossible for anyone no matter how highly skilled to recover your old data. This is like trying to over-egg the pudding, simply it gives you lot the full assurance that your personal data is irrecoverable .

There are two means you can exercise this. You lot can load your device with big files such equally video clips until the storage is filled up, so erase these files; or preferably, you can use a special app from the Play Store such as iShredder or Shreddit . These apps use shredding algorithm techniques to digitally shred data permanently. Once completed, you are good to go for the terminal pace, which is the factory data reset.

Remove your accounts, SIM and memory carte du jour

As part of the terminal preparatory procedure,  you want to make sure you remove all your accounts configured on your device before doing a factory reset. A Factory reset will not remove your accounts from that device. Depending on the verbal model of the Android telephone or tablet, the steps to remove your Google account may differ slightly. For most phones, go to Settings >> Accounts >> Gmail Business relationship  >> Remove Business relationship , as shown in Effigy 2.0 beneath. Yous may too want to to go through each app and service you're signed into, and sign out. Remove whatsoever other e-mail accounts setup on your device.

Effigy two.0 Screenshot showing how to remove Google accounts

The adjacent step is to remove your SIM and retentivity carte du jour, so that they don't become erased or accidentally passed on to the adjacent person. Yous can observe the memory card either on the side of the phone or in the battery compartment. Brand certain the phone is powered downward and so remove the memory card.

Perform factory reset

Finally, you are set up to perform a factory reset. When you do a factory reset on your Android device, it erases all the data on your device, and returns the telephone back to its original out-of-the-box state equally it was from the factory.

Kickoff off, permit'southward start past removing the Factory Reset Protection (FRP). Google introduced FRP in Android 5.0 Lollipop equally an extra layer of security to prevent anyone from existence able to reset and sell your device if lost or stolen. When you manufactory reset a phone with FRP enabled and endeavour to set it up as a new device, you lot'll be required to provide the login credentials for the last Google account that was configured on the device. If y'all neglect to provide those credentials, the device will remain locked and y'all can't proceeds admission. This is manifestly not okay, specially if you lot're trying to sell it or give it away.

Disabling FRP is easy. Before yous begin, bank check if your phone has a "discover my phone" app enabled, and manually disable it. On virtually phones, FRP volition exist automatically removed whenever you choose to factory reset your telephone through its settings. This will automatically remove all the associated accounts, thereby freeing the phone from FRP.

In one case the FRP is removed, you can now proceed with factory reset. The easiest manner to factory reset your device is through the settings menu. The location of the factory reset option might vary slightly depending on your manufacturer. On most phones, yous can factory reset your phone through the Settings app. Go to Settings >> General Management >> Reset >> Mill Data Reset , as shown in Figure 3.0 below. You may check your manufacturer'southward back up site for device-specific instructions. Otherwise, you tin try factory resetting your telephone using its power and book buttons.

Figure iii.0 Screenshot showing how to perform mill reset

You can ostend that FRP is disabled by attempting to sign back into the device afterwards factory reset. If information technology asks for the previous username and countersign, information technology ways FRP is still enabled. If it doesn't, you're good to go. You may at present power information technology off and repackage it for the new owner.

See also:

• Best VPN for Android
• Best antivirus for Android

Source: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/wipe-android-phone-before-selling/

Posted by: phillipspritioneatch.blogspot.com

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