Latest study done at the Cambridge University shows us that hard reset won’t necessarily help you wiping your personal data completely from the device. More than 500 million smartphone users are affected from this vulnerability even after complete encryption of the storage, this was because of the fact that the place where the decryption key was stored was not wiped in the factory data reset and hence the key can be obtained by generating a master token.
Study was conducted on 21 smartphones with 2.3.x to 4.3.x android versions and they found out that even after completely wiping off the device using android native settings, their still can be instances of running into data that can be potentially used against the person who tried to wipe it.
Although there is no official comment on the topic from Google, but we dig up more on the topic and found out that the exploit can be further used in Android 5.o lollipop, as the facets above still hold true only the fact that it might require more time to generate the encryption key came into hindrance.
Yo can’t possibly escape the fact that flash storage is a form of a very unreliable storage.
Two solutions, either destroy the device or fill it up to neck with random data.
Google’s in-built factory reset tool in incompetent to do what has meant the only single most trusted wiping tool for android? Is that it? Well people deeply rely on this tool when they are either giving up their phone to sell, recycle or giving up for charity.
Is there any possible solution? Yes there might be one. Destroy the device, yes you heard it right. Let us enlighten you on the fact that it is very hard for one to clear flash memory because it is very unreliable memory and this is not just related to android, there is plenty of room to be nervous about because basically iPhones and WP use the same technology.
Or you will have to use an application that will first delete all your storage then fill it with random data so as to fill in the holes that can be used to recover the data that you previously stored in the device. More on this later in our new series in which we will tell you how to safely remove all your data on the smartphone.
Guys what do you think of this article, are you scared that someone might be able to recover your data? Let us know in the comment box below. Until next time, Keep Androtrending!
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