Quick Fix For Android’s Factory Reset Security Problem

For the past few weeks Internet was filled with the news related to “Android’s Factory Reset Security Problem”. We’ll brief about it once again here. Suppose if you own an Android device and if you want to sell it, then you’ll probably try to factory reset it, so that you can erase everything from the phone. But will it erase everything? According to some Cambridge researchers, Android’s factory reset option is not as reliable as the name sounds. They were able to recover some information from the phone even after doing a complete factory reset. Sounds scary isn’t it? But don’t worry, Adrian Ludwig has a quick fix for Android’s factory reset issue.

Fix For Android’s Factory Reset Issue

Adrian Ludwig, the lead engineer for Android security, recently commented on the study provided by the Cambridge researchers. He has given us a quick fix and a simple tip to overcome this issue.

“If you plan to resell or discard your device and you haven’t already, encrypt it and then perform a factory reset.”

Yes, that’s right. Before you get rid of your Android smartphone, it is recommended to encrypt the device first and then do a factory reset.

You can perform encryption by going to: Settings > Security > Encrypt Phone

The encryption takes time depending upon the content size in your smartphone. So be patient and wait for the encryption to get completed. Now if you are planning to sell (or resell) your smartphone, then you can perform a factory reset (after taking a backup if you need) by going to: Settings > Backup & reset > Factory data reset

That’s it. Adrian Ludwig suggests this is the best way to get rid of all the data in your phone.

If you want to protect your Android smartphone and its data, then this is a quick way. By keeping your smartphone’s memory encrypted, it’ll be hard for others to gather the undeleted data, even if they do so, they won’t be able to align it properly. Hope Google (or Android) provides an update to fix this issue overall, because people often change their smartphones and the ‘Factory reset’ option will be used by almost everyone.