[Android Central Question]

I recently sold my Samsung s6 and factory reset it all I’m just slightly worried that it can all be restored by someone. I had a password on the phone would that help?

[belodion]

A password of what kind? https://forums.androidcentral.com/sh...d.php?t=409154

Yes, data can be retrieved from a factory reset phone.

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The OP is asking if someone else can retrieve previously stored data -- it's conceivable, but would require a lot of specialized effort. Personally, I never worry about it.

I think what belodion was referring to was if this were your phone and you inadvertently did a factory reset, then it may be possible to recover at least some of the data -- but this usually relies on having backed up or synced your data beforehand on a regular basis.

[belodion]

^ In fact I meant simply that it is possible for a third party to recover such data, though of course, as you say, requiring special knowledge and skills. I assumed that the OP is worried about that, and with good - though small - reason.

I'm not sure what a reset phone with a password on it means, and the OP has not answered me, but if the phone has not had the Google account removed from it before resetting, it will be unusable, which may lead to future trouble for him or her.

[Mooncatt]

I thought the S6 was new enough that it would be encrypted out of the box, which would prevent any data recovery after a reset. I know this was an issue with early Android's unless you manually encrypted them, but I haven't heard of any successful data recovery after an encrypted phone was reset.

But yes, if the phone still had the Google account logged in before the reset, that could lock the phone out if the reset wasn't done properly.

[Rukbat]

Factory resetting the phone wipes everything - there's no recovery from that. So you have nothing to worry about. (As long as you removed your Google account. If you didn't remove it, the buyer can't use the phone.) There's nothing to restore any more.

[belodion]

^ @Rukbat. Is it not true then that resetting simply marks the files as deleted, without actually deleting them? My understanding is that to fully wipe the phone, you would have to overwrite the marked-deleted files with some sort of white noise. Perhaps I'm wrong.

[Rukbat]

A factory reset resets the entire /storage/emulated/0 partition. There might be some way to get in there and recover something, but there aren't that many people who understand Linux well enough to do that, and I doubt that any of them are trying to restore wiped phones, except for fun. (Restoring deleted files, or records in a database marked as deleted, is child's play compared to that.)