Study Finds Mobile Phone Factory Reset Doesn't Erase All Info

For those who like to keep mobile phone until they are so beaten up and slow that they can't be resold, you may really be on top of things; when it comes to security at least. A new study from some researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK has determined that restoring your Android phone back to default factory settings doesn't erase everything.

Twenty-one phones were tested, all using the Android operating system, from various manufacturers. All of them were found to retain text messages, Google account credentials and messaging app conversations. Eighty percent (80%) of the time, even some email messages were left on the device.

And if you think that by deleting your social media apps you are deleting your content, think again. Those "tokens" that allow you to access your accounts remained on the devices as well. Even some photos and videos stuck around.

Various methods were tried to erase the information, including employing manual deletion of photos, messages, and apps. However, information remains in the flash memory, which is difficult to erase.

The used mobile phone market is massive. Unfortunately, 630 million mobile phone are susceptible to this issue. The advice is that if you are concerned about this, and you should be, just smash your phone rather than sell it on the market. Google recommends you remotely wipe the phone as if it were stolen and update to a newer version of the operating system that allows encryption with a passcode. However, that didn't completely resolve the problem. In addition, if you revoke your devices access to your Google account, you can protect your Google content.

The best performing phone in this study was the Google Nexus 4. Other devices included were the HTC One and the ever popular Samsung Galaxy S, S2 and S Plus.

If you are one of those early adopters that buys the newest version of your favorite phone as soon as it is available, you may want to think again. Instead, perhaps consider dropping it a few more times so you feel better about smashing it rather than reselling it.