A common practice is that you reset the phone to Factory Defaults or Factory Reset when you dispose of your old phone and sell it to someone else. The question arises, it is safe to sell your phone just by resetting it to factory default? Factory Reset doesn’t guarantee complete deletion of data so in my opinion; it’s not a good idea to rely just on factory reset option for the data security. Now many of you will ask, “How to wipe out data completely if I want to Sell My Phone?” Here I’m going to reveal you some tips and tricks so that you may remove all your data completely before you sell it to some other stranger.
Data Can Be Retrieved After Factory Reset
Thousands of cell phones at hundreds of pawn shops in the United Kingdom and the United States of America which were sold by the original owner by resetting the phones to Factory Default Settings are great risks. Data wiped out using phone’s built function of “Factory Reset” can be retrieved easily using some specially designed software and applications. If retrieved, imagine how bad will be your condition when you will know about it?
Your phone is like your brain and heart which has secrets and information only you know about. You store your data like Credit Card Information, Emails, Passwords, Social Profile Passwords, Secret Documents, Personal Images, and Videos, Call recordings and much more secret data. Even the thought of getting that data leaked puts you in shivering mode. Then how can you handover this all to someone you don’t know and who can even misuse it to defame you or to blackmail you?
Replace Data
The best way to completely remove your data is to Reset Phone to Factory setting twice. At the first time, you will reset, most of your data will be erased. Now after the phone is reset to factory default settings, put it on again and now log in with some fake ID and fill the phone memory with some videos or heavy files so that all the memory can get filled with that. Once the memory is filled completely, you can now reset the phone again to factory default setting. This time it will completely remove your data. If there will remain anything in the memory, it will be the videos or files which you used to fill the memory.
By doing this simple step, you can take a deep breath because your personal information is safe now. If you don’t know how to fill your phone memory with videos or if you think it’s a tricky and time taking thing, then there are some specialized apps as well which can do it for you. These apps will generate files which will fill up your phone memory and then you can reset your phone to factory default setting.
Data Encryption
The second option to stay secure is to encrypt your data. iPhone has built-in encryption function, but if you are an Android user, then you must use some application to encrypt your data so that no one can access it without your permission even if you sell your phone to someone else.
