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Before selling a smartphone on classifieds sites, some precautions are now de rigueur.
Smartphone pixabay A security specialist retrieves deleted thousands of photos in buying used 20 smartphones
Smartphones have become real information about their own mines. Problem: when someone resells mobile, it can reveal a lot, even when we think we have everything removed.
An experiment by Avast tells us that when we sell a smartphone, even after a full reset "factory outlet", sometimes it is still possible for the new owner to recover data that we thought permanently destroyed!
The security specialist purchased 20 Android smartphones on eBay and used recovery software "simple and readily available" to restore deleted files. With just 20 phones, engineers were able to recover 40,000 photos, 1,000 queries on Google, 750 messages and e-mails and 250 contacts.
Avast says that one of the phones that were used in this experiment was the same with security software from a competing company. But it would not have prevented the recovery of stored information.
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So you are warned. The deletion of your data before selling a smartphone, is not enough. According to Avast, must "crush" the information. And just to simplify things, the company offers (coincidentally ...) application Anti-Theft on Play Store. Then simply activate a feature and delete data from a computer by connecting with its Avast account.
Speaking to our colleagues Fastcompany.com, an official Avast said that "delivery to the factory state" does not guarantee the permanent deletion of all information. Other experts also offer data encryption to guarantee a certain level of confidentiality.