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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 3:16 pm 
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I'm going to sell my current Samsung Galaxy Note 4 phone, in the past I always gave my old phones to any family member that needed a replacement, or they sat in a drawer... this time though I could get £134 (believe it when I see it, even new they sell for less on ebay uk! LOL) if I sell it to one of the plethora of online phone recycling companies so I'm going to do that, needless to say ensuring all my personal data is wiped is paramount, the problem is afaict a 'Factory Reset' simply won't guarantee that.

That said, I have done some searching and the following article appears to tick all the boxes (possibly applies to all mobile devices?) however I'm curious to know what others think, e.g. Is this best practice or is there a better way?

How to Erase All Content on a Samsung Galaxy:
https://www.wikihow.tech/Erase-All-Cont ... ung-Galaxy

Basically what I intend to do is remove the Sim Card and SD Card, encrypt the phone, then perform a Factory Reset.

I'm not going to bother with the "dummy data" steps because if someone really wants to get my old data they likely will and there's no guarantee the 'dummy data' will even over-write all the sensitive data anyway.
(By sensitive I mean email login details, saved passwords etc... my life really isn't that exciting! lol)

Thoughts?


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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 5:18 pm 
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I don't carry a phone but do have 2 Android tablets. From experience with the tablets I don't see any reason that the procedure in the article would not be effective. Still, since I have tablets, not a phone, don't take my opinion as fact. ;)

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 5:32 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
I don't carry a phone but do have 2 Android tablets. From experience with the tablets I don't see any reason that the procedure in the article would not be effective. Still, since I have tablets, not a phone, don't take my opinion as fact. ;)

My thinking is the OS "android" will basically be the same across any android device... so overwriting/deleting/encrypting/restoring files will be the same on any device.
i.e. Get it right on one device it should work on all running android... not sure if that's naive but it makes sense to me.


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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:22 pm 
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On the surface that does make sense Doddie. The problem is that the Android OS is similar to Linux in the fact that different versions have totally different capabilities and 'react' differently to some actions that look the same. That said I still think that the encryption before reset would add another level of security.

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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 6:10 pm 
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All done, boxed up ready to send.

It was pretty straightforward and simple though the process on my Galaxy Note 4 did differ slightly from the "howto" I linked earlier.

Where it differed follows:

Part 1: Encrypting Your Data:

step 2: The phone didn't need to be fully charged, out of curiosity, with the phone charging I attempted to start the process with only 67% of battery charge, the phone complained it required at least 80% so I charged it to 87% and tried again, the encryption process began.

steps 4 & 5: I've always had a 4 digit 'pin number' to secure access to my phone so I was expecting I'd need a new 6 character password at this stage. Wrong, it asked for the pin number and off it went.

Interestingly there was an added option in step 5, an option to include "memory" where no data was written (or words to that effect). I presumed by "memory" it meant free space on whatever type of drive is installed, i.e. where the data is stored, and assumed that with the potential for previously deleted data to potentially reside there I chose to include that.

step 6: 15 minutes is all it took and afaict it only restarted once, twice if you include when it finished and reloaded android.

At this point my phone was HOT, by far the hottest I have ever experienced it... not hot in that you can't touch it but certainly hot enough that I'd be seriously worried if I was using it under normal circumstances!

step 7: Again, my normal 4 digit pin sufficed.

Part 2 Formatting the SD Card: Not used as I'd already removed the Sim & SD Cards.

Part 3 Wiping the Phone: As described although I did have to "factory reset" twice... I don't know why but the phone did some very odd things after the first reset including restarting , I suspect it was possibly crashing due to overheating because I went straight from encrypting to resetting without letting it cool down, so I shut it down and waited 5 minutes before running another factory reset.

Part 4 Taking Extra Precautions: I skipped this for reasons I explained in a an earlier post.

In summary, it was painless, now I just have to sit back and wait to see if the company that quoted me £134 for a device in "good" condition honours their quote. I'd be amazed if they don't given they have a 5 star rating on trust pilot and I'd be happy if someone sold me the phone and listed it as in mint condition:
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.musicmagpie.co.uk


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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 6:35 pm 
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Glad it all worked out for you. :) Good job.

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