Stolen device: can the SD "partition" be accessed after phone reset

[mrgou]

Hi,

My Galaxy S6 was just stolen. I changed all my password, and sent a wipe request on the Android device manager.

Now, since my phone was locked with my fingerprint, the thief can only do a hard reset of the phone. After doing that, could they still access data saved on the phone, on the "SD" partition of the device? Or will the reset wipe everything on the phone?

Thanks!

R.

 

[SpookDroid]

Sorry to hear your phone was stolen

A remote wipe erases everything on the phone, and since this phone doesn't support external SD cards, that does mean anything that's been saved to it (but if it did have an SD Card, the remote wipe includes that as well, as long as the card wasn't removed before the wipe command could be executed).

Of course, with some data forensic tools and techniques (not that easy, mind you) some data might be recovered, but again, this takes effort and know-how.

 

[mrgou]

OK. Unfortunately, the remote wipe request does not seem to have succeeded, so either the phone is still shut down, or it's been reset. So what I was wondering is if absolutely all data on the phone is wiped when a factory reset is performed (i.e., unless forensic tools are used, and since the phone was locked, the data on the phone cannot be accessed).

It wasn't the case on my earlier S5, where music files and pictures saved on the internal SD partition of the memory were still there after I reset it to give it away.

Thanks!

 

[SpookDroid]

Not sure why that happened on your S5, but a hard reset should wipe all data in the phone, even SD cards and whatever partition it has inside (unless rooted and/or tampered with, then all bets are off).

But the 'data forensics' part remains. It is technically possible (note that I said possible, not easy or straight-forward) to recover SOME data from wiped devices if no new data has been overwritten. Unless whomever has your phone is a tech wiz or this is a case of corporate espionage from someone with the right resources, I wouldn't worry about that.