In the March 10 issue of Windows Secrets, there was an article titled: 'Prepping an Android phone for safe disposal'. In that article, among the many suggestions, the author said the following:
****************
Step 7: Encrypt your phone’s remaining contents
The benefits of whole-phone encryption are obvious. Without the correct password, no one can access any of the phone’s contents.
and
Step 8: Factory-reset the operating system
The Android’s factory-reset process returns the operating system to its as-shipped condition. That will erase your Google account info, application data, any remaining downloaded apps, music, photos, and other user data.
and
What’s more, a factory reset also deletes any locally stored encryption key; so if you also encrypted your phone’s contents, you’ll have effectively made it impossible for anyone to recover anything from the phone, even if files or file fragments somehow survived the previous steps.
************************
I have an old Android that I want to donate. As I understand what the author said, if I had done the encryption step and then the reset, the phone would work just like a new phone would--only there might be a small amount of memory used for whatever files I was not able to manually delete.
Is this a correct interpretation? I don't want to leave private information on the phone, but at the same time, I don't want to make it completely unusable to a new owner.
Thanks,
Lex
****************
Step 7: Encrypt your phone’s remaining contents
The benefits of whole-phone encryption are obvious. Without the correct password, no one can access any of the phone’s contents.
and
Step 8: Factory-reset the operating system
The Android’s factory-reset process returns the operating system to its as-shipped condition. That will erase your Google account info, application data, any remaining downloaded apps, music, photos, and other user data.
and
What’s more, a factory reset also deletes any locally stored encryption key; so if you also encrypted your phone’s contents, you’ll have effectively made it impossible for anyone to recover anything from the phone, even if files or file fragments somehow survived the previous steps.
************************
I have an old Android that I want to donate. As I understand what the author said, if I had done the encryption step and then the reset, the phone would work just like a new phone would--only there might be a small amount of memory used for whatever files I was not able to manually delete.
Is this a correct interpretation? I don't want to leave private information on the phone, but at the same time, I don't want to make it completely unusable to a new owner.
Thanks,
Lex
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram