Encryption PIN required to access Samsung Galaxy S8?

BadLuckLately

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Dec 21, 2019
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In the interest of full disclosure, this is my first time posting, so I apologize if I'm missing any necessary information or unclear, and a bit emotional atm so probably rambling...

Q: I'm going through a divorce.

My soon to be (abusive ******* of an) ex husband is required to keep me on his phone/data plan (also T Mobile) per court order. He had previously taken my phone, so I'd been using an old phone via wifi and Google Voice.

Just to be clear, his name is on the t mobile account, but I own/purchased the phone myself.

After the court order his lawyer made him give it back to me. When I turned it on, it was a black screen, said it's been encrypted and I need to enter a PIN.

I hadn't secured the phone prior to him taking it - lesson learned.

No PIN, no Google account, Samsung account, etc. I didn't want him to be able to access my accounts so took them off long ago.

My mom just died, and I have photos, videos, messages, and voicemails from her on it that aren't backed up anywhere. I'm desperate to be able to keep them.

He said he did not factory/hard reset it, nor did he put any accounts on it. He won't tell me the PIN. T Mobile can't help, as I'm not the account holder. Samsung has only told me to do a factory reset.

Do anyone have any experience with how to get back into my phone without a reset?
 

Mooncatt

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Feb 23, 2011
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Unfortunately you'll need the PIN it's asking for, and I would be talking to your lawyer about handling it as part of the divorce proceedings. This is a security feature, so we are not allowed to discuss ways of circumventing them.

Did you have the Google Photos app on your phone and set up to backup your photos? If so, they should be on your cloud based account, which you could verify by accessing them from another device with your Google login info.