How To Wipe An Android Phone Clean

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How to wipe your Android Phone completely before selling it

Thinking of selling or recycling your Android device? Make sure to delete your data so you're not handing personal information to a stranger. We explain how to fully wipe an Android phone or tablet.

UPDATED: Jan 20, 2022

wipe Android Phone before selling

And so a new Android phone or tablet has just caught your attending, and you are looking to upgrade to the latest one as speedily as possible. Merely what do you exercise with your sometime device? There are a number of options available. You may want to give information technology away, trade it in with your carrier, put information technology upward for sale, or recycle it.

Whatever decision you take, it's important that all your personal data is wiped clean before disposing of it. You don't want to accidentally laissez passer on your personal information to someone else. Leaving personal details on your old device may betrayal you to security and privacy risks.

So, how exercise you properly wipe your information off your sometime Android device without running the chance of leaving remnant information? Is it plenty to just delete the files or practice a manufactory reset?

Basic file deletion and factory reset are not enough

A lot of people perform a manufactory reset to wipe everything off their Android device, before disposing or reselling information technology. Just the problem is, a mill reset doesn't really delete everything. According to a recent study by the Academy of Hertfordshire in conjunction with Comparitech , information technology was found that information technology's still possible to recover photos, emails, text and other documents from a reset Android device.

Reverse to popular belief, when you delete a file from your telephone memory, SD carte du jour, or figurer difficult disk for that thing, the file isn't actually removed. Permanent data erasure goes beyond bones file deletion commands, which only remove straight pointers to the data deejay sectors, and make data recovery possible with common software tools.

The operating system (Android, Windows, etc) uses a concept called indexing to keep runway of where files are stored in a device. Each file on your device memory or storage has a arrow that tells the OS where the file's data begins and ends. Information technology'southward a lot like the index page in textbooks. When y'all delete a file, the OS removes the pointer to that file (alike to erasing page numbers from the table of content of a textbook) and marks the sectors containing the file's data as available.

From the file system'due south point of view, the file is no longer nowadays on your storage device, and the sectors containing its data are considered free space. Even so, until the Os writes new data over the sectors containing the contents of the file, the files are even so recoverable. A file recovery program can scan the device for these deleted files and restore them.

And so if you are considering disposing of your old Android device, brand certain you wipe your personal data the right way. In this commodity, we'll show y'all how to securely wipe your personal data off your sometime Android device before selling or recycling it, to ensure it doesn't have any remnant of personal data. Outlined below are five important steps you need to take to deeply wipe your data and counter data remanence. We'll accept you through each step in item.

Here'due south how to wipe your Android phone completely before selling:

Fill-in your data
Encrypt your data
Overwrite with junk data
Remove your accounts, SIM and memory card
Perform factory reset

Backup your information

The importance of bankroll upwardly everything on your phone before wiping information technology cannot be overemphasized. Ideally, if Fill-in to Google Drive is turned on, device settings, apps and app data, SMS, call history, and contacts are automatically backed upwards and synced with Google Drive. Otherwise, you need to manually back them up.

Here's how to backup your data on whatsoever Android device:

Y'all don't have to worry much nearly backing upwardly your email. You lot tin hands recreate it on your new device. Nigh email setups keep copies of downloaded emails on the server. If you're not certain almost it, simply log on to your electronic mail on another device to confirm the backups on the server.
When it comes to apps, Google has a tape of all the Android apps you've purchased. Then long as you lot're going to another Android device, you tin can download them again to your new phone at no charge. Ameliorate however, Google can as well help you sync all your apps to your account. If you don't have it already enabled, you can enable it by going to Settings >> Accounts >> Enable Automatically Sync Data . After that'due south done, move to Settings >> System >> Backup >> Enable Backup to Google Drive . Some apps may have their own specific cloud fill-in storage . Others like WhatsApp rely on Google Drive, if enabled. This will ensure all your data is ready to be unpacked when your new phone arrives.
Ane of the most important things yous should back up is your contacts. Fortunately, Google makes information technology really easy to fill-in. By backing upward everything to Google contacts, your contacts volition follow yous everywhere and sync with every new Android device. If you are not already using Google contacts, you can set it upward by going to Settings >> Accounts >> Google Account >> Account Sync >> Enable Contacts. Please run across Figure ane.0 below.
Another important piece of data you want to fill-in are your photos, videos and music. There are a couple of ways to do this only the fastest and most effective is to connect your phone to your PC or Mac using the USB cablevision that came with your telephone. Mac users may need to install a small app called Android File Transfer to become this working. Once connected, you'll find all of your photos and videos in a folder called DCIM, and your music files in a folder called Music. Now you can just copy those folders over to your calculator.

What about all your text messages, call logs, organization settings, calendar events, playlists, browser bookmarks, etc? To back up these, you may consider a third-political party fill-in tool such as Backup Your Mobile or My Backup Pro , which allows you to backup your stuff to the cloud or to your retentivity card and to sync it back over to your new device.

Figure i.0 Screenshot showing how to backup to Google contacts

Encrypt your data

Encryption renders your personal data in your device in an unreadable or scrambled format; which means that even if someone tries to restore your data, they won't be able to access it. This step is necessary to ensure that if by some phenomenon, a skilled hacker does manage to get hold of your erased data or some residue left behind subsequently a full reset, they will not be able to make sense of it. Anyone attempting to access the encrypted data will need a special fundamental (PIN, password, or lock screen design) to decrypt it, which of class they don't accept.

Most Android users rarely encrypt their telephone data, probably due to either ignorance or fear of functioning degradation. Co-ordinate to an estimate , merely "ten percent of the world's 1.4 billion Android phones were encrypted, compared to 95 percentage of all iPhones." But these days, it seems newer Android devices come with encryption enabled by default. If your device is reasonably recent (Android 6.0 and above), information technology should almost certainly be encrypted by default. Merely if you're getting rid of an older Android device, it might not exist.

If your phone doesn't have encryption enabled by default, you tin can encrypt it manually with just a few taps:

For Android devices running Android 5.0, navigate to Settings >> Security >> Encryption >> Encrypt phone . For Android 4.four KitKat or lower, navigate to Settings > Security > Screen Lock > Encrypt phone.
Tap "Encrypt telephone" or "Encrypt tablet", equally the instance may be. Please notation that you'll be asked to plug in your telephone to charge while the encryption procedure is going on, just to ensure that it doesn't ability off and cause errors.
Yous'll at present exist prompted to fix a PIN, password or lock screen which is needed to admission your encrypted files.

Overwrite with junk data

If you desire to be absolutely certain that your personal data cannot be accessed by anyone, yous tin overwrite your encrypted data with junk information, thereby making information technology impossible for anyone no matter how highly skilled to recover your quondam information. This is like trying to over-egg the pudding, only it gives you the full balls that your personal data is irrecoverable .

In that location are two ways you tin exercise this. Y'all can load your device with big files such as video clips until the storage is filled upwardly, and so erase these files; or preferably, you lot can utilise a special app from the Play Store such as iShredder or Shreddit . These apps apply shredding algorithm techniques to digitally shred information permanently. Once completed, y'all are proficient to go for the terminal stride, which is the manufacturing plant data reset.

Remove your accounts, SIM and memory card

Equally part of the concluding preparatory process, you want to make sure you remove all your accounts configured on your device before doing a factory reset. A Factory reset volition not remove your accounts from that device. Depending on the exact model of the Android phone or tablet, the steps to remove your Google account may differ slightly. For most phones, go to Settings >> Accounts >> Gmail Account >> Remove Business relationship , as shown in Figure two.0 below. You may also desire to to go through each app and service y'all're signed into, and sign out. Remove any other email accounts setup on your device.

Effigy two.0 Screenshot showing how to remove Google accounts

The next footstep is to remove your SIM and retentivity card, and so that they don't get erased or accidentally passed on to the next person. You tin find the memory card either on the side of the phone or in the battery compartment. Brand sure the phone is powered down and then remove the retention carte du jour.

Perform manufacturing plant reset

Finally, yous are set to perform a manufacturing plant reset. When you do a factory reset on your Android device, it erases all the data on your device, and returns the phone back to its original out-of-the-box state equally information technology was from the factory.

Offset off, let'due south start past removing the Manufacturing plant Reset Protection (FRP). Google introduced FRP in Android 5.0 Lollipop as an actress layer of security to prevent anyone from being able to reset and sell your device if lost or stolen. When you factory reset a phone with FRP enabled and try to set it up as a new device, y'all'll exist required to provide the login credentials for the last Google account that was configured on the device. If you fail to provide those credentials, the device volition remain locked and you can't proceeds access. This is obviously not okay, especially if y'all're trying to sell it or give it away.

Disabling FRP is easy. Earlier you begin, check if your phone has a "find my phone" app enabled, and manually disable information technology. On most phones, FRP volition exist automatically removed whenever you choose to factory reset your phone through its settings. This will automatically remove all the associated accounts, thereby freeing the phone from FRP.

Once the FRP is removed, you can now proceed with factory reset. The easiest way to factory reset your device is through the settings menu. The location of the mill reset option might vary slightly depending on your manufacturer. On almost phones, y'all can factory reset your phone through the Settings app. Go to Settings >> Full general Management >> Reset >> Factory Data Reset , every bit shown in Effigy 3.0 beneath. You may check your manufacturer's support site for device-specific instructions. Otherwise, y'all tin can try factory resetting your phone using its power and volume buttons.

Figure 3.0 Screenshot showing how to perform factory reset

You can ostend that FRP is disabled past attempting to sign back into the device after mill reset. If it asks for the previous username and password, it means FRP is still enabled. If it doesn't, y'all're skilful to become. Yous may at present power it off and repackage it for the new owner.

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