How to completely wipe off phone data before re-selling it

[Vadiraj]

I found a article on web that states you must not sell your mobile phone before formatting it completely. I am confused with that. My brother just sold his iPhone. He usually use his debit card to buy some online games. The article that saw says that there are chances of recovering those information. The phone was sold to a mobile shop from where he purchased Samsung Galaxy S3. He uses the phone to make payments by linking his bank account with the phone. I hope that information can't be leaked as we had restored the phone to factory settings.

[Twitter]

There are rare chances for that. And above all there hardly tools that are easily available for people to access deleted information. No one like go much into technical confusion. Somehow it is possible to recover, but people are not interested in the same. It is a very complicated procedure. Factory settings will do the work.

[Orion lella]

From Security point of view Factory Settings are not strong enough. They clear your phone data on software level. There are no specific applications that can do this. You can check the phone thoroughly after running factory settings. Even if you notice a glimpse then you have to do that again. Many of us forget to check the cellular settings or data. This is not important but still needs to be cleared. Phones like iPhone are some of the best device in market. Once you run factory restore on it, there is no chances to get data out of them. They are the best security point of view. You must not use applications that share your phone data with others.

There are number of social networking apps, or games which are liked with your data. They can still keep a cache about the information. Flashing the phone entirely is considered as the best way to wipe out everything. Flashing process consist of a way by removing the phone software and installing it back again. It is does by specialize tools. Flashing of Nokia phone is found to be more convenient and easy. While if you are using iPhone then you do not need to worry about the same. They are strong enough to wipe out everything which is completely unrecoverable.

[Arzaan]

That is the reason I love Blackberry's. They are awesome devices. My uncle gave me his phone. He had added some password in it. When I entered that wrong a number of time, the phone was restored to its original setting automatically. I tried to a number of things to find the data, but nothing was recovered. The phone has feature. In this when the phone is not used for 30 days the data is wiped out automatically. It is one of the best security platform available.

[Villiers]

The most vulnerable is Android phones. With some simple tools it is easy to get data back from it. Android is quiet popular, but it has became a bigger platform of threats. I am working on finding the best option to clean a Android phone before selling it out. I had some personal emails and business information that I cannot share with others. I also use online banking. I had seen numerous article which says that by restoring factory settings does not nothing. The data is not at all removed. It is still stays inside the phone memory.

There are a number of ways by which it can be accessed by one. The most common location where you keep data is SD Card. Which is not at all safest. It is always recommended that when you are selling your phone, do not give your SD card. So this is a matter of worry for Android user. While others those who are on iPhone and Blackberry are the most safest. For business professional Blackberry is the best. Now I wonder my ample of people carry Blackberry only for working purpose. This phones are rich in security measures.

[Andrea000]

Reset options are provided in iPhone. You just have to do that to clean up the data. Those phones which have SD card has one good point. You remove the card and done by no way your photos, videos, etc can be accessed. But phone with internal storage like iPhone needs more precaution.

[Rishab]

It is correct to some extent. Phones with internal storage gives no choice to users about wiping data. iPhone on the same hand is safer. The reset option provided is powerful and enough capable of wiping out the data. Just tap on Reset all settings and done. Android on the same hand provides you option to format your internal and sd card storage. You can check that under settings. You can tap to wipe out the data completely. For better cleaning there is a tool called as Roadkil’s Disk Wipe utility.

You can use this to clear the external storage completely. There are number of erase option available. The available options are Zero Out Data, 7-Pass Erase and 35-Pass Erase. You can use this first to clean the external phone files and if the internal phone files does not has the OS you can run this on it. Later one when you are done with the erasing stuff simply factory reset your phone back again. This is a quiet fail-safe method that you can try out.

[cHYNA]

I thought Factory Reset will do the job. I recently sold my Android phone to my friend with SD card. I was having lots of photos. I backup them and formatted. I hope that is safe enough.

[Indra-The-Tiger]

Recovering data is not a easy cup of tea. You need a number of forensic tools for that and it is a experts job. Formatting is quiet helpful. There are number of erasing software that are available on net. when you are formatting do not format it with Quick settings. Let it go slowly and one it is done your entire data is removed. There are less chances of recovering them. I never sell my SD card with my phone. With factory restore a number of phones are having master reset option. This is also quiet powerful. Flashing as mentioned above is not possible with every device as different OS has different way of restoration.

[Caiden]

It does not looks like a matter of worry. Simply restore the operating system and wipe out the phone data completely. Format the memory card with external utilities and done. There would be no way to get your data from it.