Selling your smartphones? Your deleted data can be retrieved

May 24, 2015 17:32

Thinking of selling your old smartphone? Watch out, as its data may be retrievable even after wiping it!

User data is routinely retrievable from second-hand Android devices that have been wiped through a factory reset, a new Cambridge study has warned.

Most Android handsets offer no easily accessible way of deleting user data including access tokens, messages, images and other content, researchers said.

The factory-reset shortcomings uncovered by researchers at the Cambridge University affect an estimated 500 million Android handsets, and pose a problem for organisations that routinely resell such devices.

Researchers said up to 630 million people do not properly wipe multimedia files.

They examined 21 second-hand devices running Android versions 2.3 to 4.3 from five manufacturers that had been wiped using the operating system's built-in factory reset feature, 'Tech Week Europe' reported.

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