help me make sure no sneaky installs from fleabay

[greenphone]

hi. first post and first time i have ever had a smart phone. i got a new fascinate off ebay w/a good esn number for a good deal. the guy threw in a 32mb sd card. so he sends it to me and lets me know that he installed and reformatted the memory which ticked me off as i didn't want him fiddling with anything.

so i set it up looked at the memory and it said that around 17 gb were available out of a total of 29.72 gb. i reformatted and then it said 29.72 avail out of 29.72, so i assume he installed something.

after i reformatted, i did a factory data reset. then i looked up what default apps and games come with phone and all seemed to be in order.

my question for you smart people is how can i be sure that NOTHING sneaky is on my phone. i believe the factory reset will not uninstall files he could have hidden.

please help. while i'm green with these phones i can follow good directions. i want to wipe it completely clean. thanks.

sincerely,
annoyed chick

 

[Landshark]

hi. first post and first time i have ever had a smart phone. i got a new fascinate off ebay w/a good esn number for a good deal. the guy threw in a 32mb sd card. so he sends it to me and lets me know that he installed and reformatted the memory which ticked me off as i didn't want him fiddling with anything.

so i set it up looked at the memory and it said that around 17 gb were available out of a total of 29.72 gb. i reformatted and then it said 29.72 avail out of 29.72, so i assume he installed something.

after i reformatted, i did a factory data reset. then i looked up what default apps and games come with phone and all seemed to be in order.

my question for you smart people is how can i be sure that NOTHING sneaky is on my phone. i believe the factory reset will not uninstall files he could have hidden.

please help. while i'm green with these phones i can follow good directions. i want to wipe it completely clean. thanks.

sincerely,
annoyed chick

I would say it is completely clean. I bought a brand new 32GB sd card at my verizon store and my total space for my sd card says 29.72GB.

 

[greenphone]

i think the card is clean, but couldn't there be something on the phone itself?

 

[DroidXcon]

hi. first post and first time i have ever had a smart phone. i got a new fascinate off ebay w/a good esn number for a good deal. the guy threw in a 32mb sd card. so he sends it to me and lets me know that he installed and reformatted the memory which ticked me off as i didn't want him fiddling with anything.

so i set it up looked at the memory and it said that around 17 gb were available out of a total of 29.72 gb. i reformatted and then it said 29.72 avail out of 29.72, so i assume he installed something.

after i reformatted, i did a factory data reset. then i looked up what default apps and games come with phone and all seemed to be in order.

my question for you smart people is how can i be sure that NOTHING sneaky is on my phone. i believe the factory reset will not uninstall files he could have hidden.

please help. while i'm green with these phones i can follow good directions. i want to wipe it completely clean. thanks.

sincerely,
annoyed chick

Welcome to Android Central , i highly doubt that anything malicious was on the card maybe just basic files that are created from different apps.... but since you want to wipe the phone to be safe we may aswell move you up to bigger and better software since you need to use the same process anyway to wipe the phone as you will to put in custom software.

if you like your phone with verizon and samsung software use the stock file

if you want most the verizon stuff gone use the debloated file

if you want custom operating system that has removed all verizon software and most samsung software and is faster i would go with superclean 2.6

files and instructions can be found here and feel free to post questions in that thread and we will help you
http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...ged-roms-w-root-clockwork-updated-2-27-a.html

 

[greenphone]

well, at this point i'm actually not that interested in apps at all. i mainly went for this phone for the camera and low sar values. and verizon ticked me off trying to force me to buy a data plan so i went with page plus. is there some test i could run to see if anything was added recently?

i think i'm too paranoid to use apps.

 

[DroidXcon]

well, at this point i'm actually not that interested in apps at all. i mainly went for this phone for the camera and low sar values. and verizon ticked me off trying to force me to buy a data plan so i went with page plus. is there some test i could run to see if anything was added recently?

i think i'm too paranoid to use apps.

oh yeah if you are on page plus dont flash anything on your phone,,,,,, no but what you could do is get an app brain account and install app brain on your phone and sync them, this will give you a list of applications on your phone ,,,if you trust us you can pm us with a link to your app brain profile and we can look at your apps and tell you if we see anything malicious

but what i would do is check if you are rooted if you are not rooted you are pretty safe from anyone taking control of your phone

go to the market and get terminal emulator,,any free version will to,,open it and type SU if $ turns int # then you are rooted ,, which isnt a problem if you are the one who did it

 

[Sheepdog Elite]

I would agree with DroidXcon with one little addition, you can keep the phone completely factory by flashing according to the link I've provided.

http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...ls-trade-troubleshooting-returning-stock.html

This will keep your phone un-rooted, and you can just update over the air with no complications. If all you want is piece of mind, just flash that, it'll totally purge the phone back to 100% complete factory without any room to hide anything.

Edit: sorry, missed the page plus part. You can flash it to clean house, then upgrade via odin or other methods.

 

[DroidXcon]

I would agree with DroidXcon with one little addition, you can keep the phone completely factory by flashing according to the link I've provided.

http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...ls-trade-troubleshooting-returning-stock.html

This will keep your phone un-rooted, and you can just update over the air with no complications. If all you want is piece of mind, just flash that, it'll totally purge the phone back to 100% complete factory without any room to hide anything.

Edit: sorry, missed the page plus part. You can flash it to clean house, then upgrade via odin or other methods.

No dont follow that,,,if she flashes anything from of ours she will lose ability to make calls and data,, dont they run on different baseband???

 

[greenphone]

ok, im in market now. just picked terminal emulator and downloaded it and when i try to open it just says it stopped unexpetedly. try again.

no luck with that one.

 

[Sheepdog Elite]

No dont follow that,,,if she flashes anything from of ours she will lose ability to make calls and data,, dont they run on different baseband???

If they run different baseband then the fascinate wouldn't work at all, what I forgot to mention was to flash the DI01 full file from odin. It will just clean out all of the hidey holes, while not rooting the phone or anything. From what I understand the OP picked up a verizon fascinate.

 

[DroidXcon]

ok, im in market now. just picked terminal emulator and downloaded it and when i try to open it just says it stopped unexpetedly. try again.

no luck with that one.

try another terminal emulator, there are many of them,, unless you want to learn something new
http://forum.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/56697-how-quick-adb.html
once you establish a connection
then you can do adb shell, then type su

 

[greenphone]

ok, i'm on a mac, so the part about a pc and the c prompt i guess is out. my firmware says 2.1. after i downloaded the terminal app that didn't work i did another factory reset and it removed that app which makes me feel a bit better.

i actually have to go offline now, but tomorrow i will download another terminal emulator and see if i can tell if someone rooted my phone. if they did then i should assume the worst and if not, then is it safe to say that by reformatting the card and doing a factory reset i am clean? i'll be back later to read.

thank you ALL so much for your help. here i am saying i won't download anything and already i went to market. ha. please Lord don't let there be a castlevania game there or i'll be in trouble!

 

[jtalker1965]

well, at this point i'm actually not that interested in apps at all. i mainly went for this phone for the camera and low sar values. and verizon ticked me off trying to force me to buy a data plan so i went with page plus. is there some test i could run to see if anything was added recently?

i think i'm too paranoid to use apps.

Ticked you off? You have to have a data plan for the phone. Blackberry and all smart phones need it. This phone may be more than you need if you are afraid off it. I was the same way with my BB, now I enjoy the smart phone and every one here. Just my .02

 

[BigSwoe]

You might also consider loading an anti virus app to check everything. There are several in the market. They use a lot of battery though so you may want to uninstall after you have verified that all is good.

 

[drjohnson89]

Welcome to Android Central , i highly doubt that anything malicious was on the card maybe just basic files that are created from different apps.... but since you want to wipe the phone to be safe we may aswell move you up to bigger and better software since you need to use the same process anyway to wipe the phone as you will to put in custom software.

if you like your phone with verizon and samsung software use the stock file

if you want most the verizon stuff gone use the debloated file

if you want custom operating system that has removed all verizon software and most samsung software and is faster i would go with superclean 2.6

files and instructions can be found here and feel free to post questions in that thread and we will help you
http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...ged-roms-w-root-clockwork-updated-2-27-a.html

I love that not a post or two into this you offer him links to custom roms etc. I love these forums haha.
"welcome to the neighborhood, if you want crack i know a really good guy down the street "

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[DroidXcon]

I love that not a post or two into this you offer him links to custom roms etc. I love these forums haha.
"welcome to the neighborhood, if you want crack i know a really good guy down the street "

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

is that bad form ?:-\ sorry i just assume people come looking for answers so i try to provide

 

[greenphone]

oh yeah if you are on page plus dont flash anything on your phone,,,,,, no but what you could do is get an app brain account and install app brain on your phone and sync them, this will give you a list of applications on your phone ,,,if you trust us you can pm us with a link to your app brain profile and we can look at your apps and tell you if we see anything malicious

but what i would do is check if you are rooted if you are not rooted you are pretty safe from anyone taking control of your phone

go to the market and get terminal emulator,,any free version will to,,open it and type SU if $ turns int # then you are rooted ,, which isnt a problem if you are the one who did it

hi droidxcon.

got a TE that works and typed in SU then hit enter and it says:

su: not found

the $ is still there, so does that tell me no one went in there to fiddle around?

btw, the more i play around with this phone the more i love it. thanks for your help!

 

[greenphone]

You might also consider loading an anti virus app to check everything. There are several in the market. They use a lot of battery though so you may want to uninstall after you have verified that all is good.

can you recommend a decent free one? thanks.

 

[DroidXcon]

can you recommend a decent free one? thanks.

try AVG

 

[greenphone]

Ticked you off? You have to have a data plan for the phone. Blackberry and all smart phones need it. This phone may be more than you need if you are afraid off it. I was the same way with my BB, now I enjoy the smart phone and every one here. Just my .02

maybe ticked off is a bit strong, but i was under the impression i can disable 3G and use wifi if i need it. i think the phone portion of it runs on 2g which the old phone do as well and they don't have to get a data plan. either way, i'm happy with page plus and LOVING this phone. samsung's fantastic. if they had put the solar panel on this like they did blue earth, i think i'd have the best phone to date.