Help Is Resetting my Phone to Factory Settings ESSENTIAL?

[It'sNotLookingGood]

I'm struggling to transfer all the files I want from my phone, onto my USB.

I will be resetting my PC to its factory settings having saved everything I wanted from there, onto said USB.

Is resetting my phone to factory settings also essential? Is it at all realistic to assume someone could bypass my passcode, and gain access to my phone after I've ctb?
Thanks!

 

[OminousVaL]

Even a computer unplugged and locked away in a closet is still vulnerable to attacks so it depends on how serious you are about keeping information locked up. So long as that phone is functional anyone can spend as long as they want trying to access it.

 

[Umbrellaterm]

Yes, they can bypass if they want.

 

[LastFlowers]

What kind of phone do you have? I have no idea about android phones, etc...but iPhones and apple devices are notoriously difficult to get into as many deceased's relatives have come to find out when trying to access a phone which is not their's to access. That is, what's on the device itself. But if you have a cloud account, that is actually easier to get into than your physical device and access can be granted when your death certificate/among other evidence-is provided. It really depends how badly those left behind want to invade your privacy and snoop through your shit. Rarely do I ever see a case where it is warranted, if the party trying to access the device doesn't know the passcode then obviously the person did not give it to them for a reason. It absolutely disgusts me that we actually get less privacy in death than we do in life. Under no circumstance, alive, would a relative be able to request a bypass to access your devices...but when you're dead it's a god damn free for all. I'm not as concerned about some random hackers because I don't have anything that would mean jack shit to a stranger besides a general sense of confusion and second hand embarrassment. But my family or anyone I know has no right to go through my things. I would be fine with destroying everything but I understand one needs a backup plan incase they fail and the things they destroyed are needed if they're not dead.

You can also turn on the feature of your phone-if you have an iPhone-that self destructs (the content) when someone gets the passcode wrong too many times.
I wonder about the SIM card though..sometimes information can roll over on that if they take it out of your phone and place it in another. Texts, and that kind of stuff. Also be warned..people with their phone number tied to any account, it leaves you open to password changes via your phone number when you're gone. It doesn't matter if your phone has a passcode because it's your phone NUMBER that is the open door here.

Besides phones and devices, I don't think any laptop or computer is safe to keep stuff on.

 

[It'sNotLookingGood]

What kind of phone do you have? I have no idea about android phones, etc...but iPhones and apple devices are notoriously difficult to get into as many deceased's relatives have come to find out when trying to access a phone which is not their's to access. That is, what's on the device itself. But if you have a cloud account, that is actually easier to get into than your physical device and access can be granted when your death certificate/among other evidence-is provided. It really depends how badly those left behind want to invade your privacy and snoop through your shit. Rarely do I ever see a case where it is warranted, if the party trying to access the device doesn't know the passcode then obviously the person did not give it to them for a reason. It absolutely disgusts me that we actually get less privacy in death than we do in life. Under no circumstance, alive, would a relative be able to request a bypass to access your devices...but when you're dead it's a god damn free for all. I'm not as concerned about some random hackers because I don't have anything that would mean jack shit to a stranger besides a general sense of confusion and second hand embarrassment. But my family or anyone I know has no right to go through my things. I would be fine with destroying everything but I understand one needs a backup plan incase they fail and the things they destroyed are needed if they're not dead.

You can also turn on the feature of your phone-if you have an iPhone-that self destructs (the content) when someone gets the passcode wrong too many times.
I wonder about the SIM card though..sometimes information can roll over on that if they take it out of your phone and place it in another. Texts, and that kind of stuff. Also be warned..people with their phone number tied to any account, it leaves you open to password changes via your phone number when you're gone. It doesn't matter if your phone has a passcode because it's your phone NUMBER that is the open door here.

Besides phones and devices, I don't think any laptop or computer is safe to keep stuff on.

Really thorough response thank you:)
I have nothing particularly incriminating on my phone, so I am not stressing toooo hard over this. Thankfully I rarely text SMS:)

 

[AnnonyBox]

Look into encrypting the device, you can encrypt entire hard drives, and have encrypted partitions on your mobile device, such as Android's Knox Secure Folder. Just resetting to factory settings isn't generally good enough, if the device wasn't encrypted before, they could conceivably pull the data from it if they absolutely wanted to. Storage is like a VHS tape, it gets overwritten, so if you haven't overwritten your storage, and you tell the phone to 'erase' everything, all it does is mark the storage as ready to be overwritten, and it can be recovered.

 

[Gromit-CTB]

I am an ex forensic tech for UK legal and law services. We had software to bypass everything if it was needed and yes we could access Mac's and iPhones. Yes we could crack pretty much everything and recover all deleted files. This was only ever used in high crime cases. For the most part nothing will be looked in to unless you have some major sensitive information. But safety first in everything

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I'm just gonna destroy my phone before I go...

 

[Gromit-CTB]

I'm just gonna destroy my phone before I go...

Best way. And also drill hole in hard drives as make is impossible to recover anything. Not that I told you that

 

[JustLosingMyself]

I'd say no...
Unless you have something really incriminating or embarrassing i wouldn't bother with that.
The only guaranteed data disposal is the physical destruction of the data storage

 

[Deleted member 23374]

I think they use jtag or the likeif they can't go by fastboot/bootloader. Destroy your phone, as completely as possible.
i compiled foremost to run on android phones for doing data recovery for morons.
the shit i would find, yuck. Destroy your phone.

 

[CoalmineCanary]

Thanks for reminding me of the media I might have on the cloud... *slams head agains desk*

 

[TooConscious]

I'm not being funny but all you claiming I phones are uncrackable have obviously limited street experience... These phones are commonly stolen and people even simply pay the dodgy phone repair shop guy £20 under the till and he'll have that phone fresh for them in a few hours.

 

[Gromit-CTB]

I'm not being funny but all you claiming I phones are uncrackable have obviously limited street experience... These phones are commonly stolen and people even simply pay the dodgy phone repair shop guy £20 under the till and he'll have that phone fresh for them in a few hours.

I used this software to retrieve everything even deleted data on Mac and iPhone

Digital Collector

A powerful forensic imaging software solution to perform triage, live data acquisition, and targeted data collection, for Windows and Mac computers.

www.blackbagtech.com

As I said earlier everything is traceable, smash phones and drill harddrive

But you didn't hear it from me

 

[ts0hill]

I am an ex forensic tech for UK legal and law services. We had software to bypass everything if it was needed and yes we could access Mac's and iPhones. Yes we could crack pretty much everything and recover all deleted files. This was only ever used in high crime cases. For the most part nothing will be looked in to unless you have some major sensitive information. But safety first in everything

I have an iPhone. If i delete my iCloud account and destroy my phone, will they be able to access my information? And do you know what encryption means or does that just mean a password on a phone

 

[Aap]

I promise, and I don't care who you are, there are things on your phone you don't want your family or police to see. My bigger question is why is it an issue for you? It's incredibly simple to reset your phone. Is there something you wish to save?

 

[paininme]

Yes when my boyfriend ctb he's phone was taken by police and messages etc where read out in his inquest

 

[LonelyDude15]

I mean do you have a good reason to belive anyone would try to access your devices by hacking them. And if so what don't you want them to see?

 

[unlovible000]

I don't care what they find on my phone, I'll be dead, there's nothing terrible on it, so there's there no point to delete anything.

 

[Weary Soul]

I question this myself, only because it is no ones business and I do not want to harm this site.

That being said, I am concerned that while hard drives may be destroyed, is it possible that your ISP provider - even with VPN/tor could potentially provide sites you have visited?

I defer to the experts on this one. I haven't a clue.

<3

 

[unlovible000]

I question this myself, only because it is no ones business and I do not want to harm this site.

That being said, I am concerned that while hard drives may be destroyed, is it possible that your ISP provider - even with VPN/tor could potentially provide sites you have visited?

I defer to the experts on this one. I haven't a clue.

<3

Yeah, this site is probably the only thing I'd remove from my phone, I too don't want damage it's reputation.

 

[Weary Soul]

@Gromit-CTB, who is not here and I have heard nothing from :)

My question above - do ISP providers have the capability to trace where you have been online, even with VPN/Tor?

 

[LastFlowers]

I'm not being funny but all you claiming I phones are uncrackable have obviously limited street experience... These phones are commonly stolen and people even simply pay the dodgy phone repair shop guy £20 under the till and he'll have that phone fresh for them in a few hours.

Not exactly relevant to what most here are worried about.
We aren't talking about our phones being lent to or stolen by strangers on the streets, and what do you mean by fresh? If you mean wiped clean and clear to use as their own phone, hell do I care? I don't care about the physical phone being taken over, only access to what is on it. If you know a personal story of family or the police getting into the deceased's iPhone without knowing the passcode- with all the content left on it unscathed-please do tell, and elaborate. And if anyone else has experience with this, please contribute...the other day I came across a woman talking about their child who committed suicide and how she was going to get access to his phone if she provided documents of his death, etc. Idk if it was an iPhone but she seemed sure she was going to get access to everything he left on his phone. Usually I see families have major issues with being able to do this, the best they get is the device factory reset so that it's usable. But everything on the phone is gone (unless they have a cloud account, which is easier to access). Besides what might remain on any type of removable memory card or SIM card.

 

[TooConscious]

Not exactly relevant to what most here are worried about.
We aren't talking about our phones being lent to or stolen by strangers on the streets, and what do you mean by fresh? If you mean wiped clean and clear to use as their own phone, hell do I care? I don't care about the physical phone being taken over, only access to what is on it. If you know a personal story of family or the police getting into the deceased's iPhone without knowing the passcode- with all the content left on it unscathed-please do tell, and elaborate. And if anyone else has experience with this, please contribute...the other day I came across a woman talking about their child who committed suicide and how she was going to get access to his phone if she provided documents of his death, etc. Idk if it was an iPhone but she seemed sure she was going to get access to everything he left on his phone. Usually I see families have major issues with being able to do this, the best they get is the device factory reset so that it's usable. But everything on the phone is gone (unless they have a cloud account, which is easier to access). Besides what might remain on any type of removable memory card or SIM card.

My point was its how much one knows, who they know or how much money they're willing to spend to access tech history. People who know technology can do ANYTHING with these devices.

I had a phone stolen that was all locked down and the next week my emails, bank and other accounts relating to monetary or identity has been accessed having to freeze accounts I could regain access to myself.

 

[TheReaper]

I mainly depends on what you have on your devices you could get away with deleting browsing history, temp files, remove any images or files you don't want anyone to find logout of any password manager and make sure to disable finger print and face id …
police might be able to get phone records and texts from the service provider in some country's and if someone is determined enough even if you factory reset they can recover files from the phone.
Just go as far as you are comfortable with to make it difficult to recover. only way to be sure is destroy the hdd and ram if really paranoid.
also if you backup your phone to the pc someone can recover it if they have access to the pc...

 

[Deleted member 13412]

Look into encrypting the device, you can encrypt entire hard drives, and have encrypted partitions on your mobile device, such as Android's Knox Secure Folder. Just resetting to factory settings isn't generally good enough, if the device wasn't encrypted before, they could conceivably pull the data from it if they absolutely wanted to. Storage is like a VHS tape, it gets overwritten, so if you haven't overwritten your storage, and you tell the phone to 'erase' everything, all it does is mark the storage as ready to be overwritten, and it can be recovered.

hi ! is it possible to encrypt my devices before and then reset to factory settings ? would that work ? would the encription make my data secured enough from strangers tht wanna access it? would the harddrive be still reusable as a new one for someone else after i die despite the encryption tht was before the resetting? id like it to be still usable for my sibling but with all my stuff gone ..
also can u suggest me a reliable encryption software for laptop too , if u know of one ? thanku for ur help

 

[LunarPyotr]

Hi there,
it's a very good question.

Resetting your PC to factory settings ( I assume you use Windows 10) isn't really that great and the files can still be recovered.
You need to wipe your hard drive multiple times in order to 100% make your data unrecoverable I can provide you the iso file that you can burn with Rufus (free image to usb stick burning tool) of this software if you don't want to purchase it

When it comes to phone, then if it's an Android, then you can easily bypass the lockscreen but if it's an iOS device, update it to iOS beta, wipe it once and set it up with an password (not pin, not passcode+Touch/FaceID).

iOS beta seems to be very hard to crack for those FBI black boxes that basically put your iPhone into recovery mode and then try to guess the pass : P

If you plan to factory reset your phone, just make sure to set the phone up again (without google or Apple ID account) and set some alphabetic password and this will at least overwrite most of the recoverable files. Eventually fill the storage up with some crap like iso files.

Don't use Samsung Knox since Samsung is forced to decrypt the secure folder if the authorities request them to do that.

@Gromit-CTB, who is not here and I have heard nothing from :)

My question above - do ISP providers have the capability to trace where you have been online, even with VPN/Tor?

Yes, in most countries they do.
Tor is actually very secure if configured correctly
VPN providers save logs for 15-30days even if they claim that they don't.

A guy from Germany tested 4 VPN provider and purchased chemicals that are used to build a bomb and he got visited by the police 4 times, even that he didn't enter any personal informations and shipped the package to an non-existing address.

 

[AnnonyBox]

hi ! is it possible to encrypt my devices before and then reset to factory settings ? would that work ? would the encription make my data secured enough from strangers tht wanna access it? would the harddrive be still reusable as a new one for someone else after i die despite the encryption tht was before the resetting? id like it to be still usable for my sibling but with all my stuff gone ..
also can u suggest me a reliable encryption software for laptop too , if u know of one ? thanku for ur help

That's not how it works. If you encrypt and then reset to factory settings, it decrypts the device before resetting, otherwise all the storage would be unusable. Anything that would work the best would also render the device unusable without a complete reinstallation of the operating system, that goes for both the phone and laptop. I'm reluctant to give out recommendations on bootable software to use, simply because someone could use it for nefarious purposes.

 

[TheReaper]

hi ! is it possible to encrypt my devices before and then reset to factory settings ? would that work ? would the encription make my data secured enough from strangers tht wanna access it? would the harddrive be still reusable as a new one for someone else after i die despite the encryption tht was before the resetting? id like it to be still usable for my sibling but with all my stuff gone ..
also can u suggest me a reliable encryption software for laptop too , if u know of one ? thanku for ur help

First off all this depends on the device you are using ,the level of security you want, what your trying to protect and how paranoid you are. I'm also going to assume you don't sell N online or are trying to hide from the CIA...

if you have a later model iphone it already has hardware encryption plus the ssd is soldered to the board so there is no need, later android phones on the other hand support encryption. find out the model of you phone and google it for more info. of course if you use a 4 - 6 digit passcode then cracking it will be easy. Also security flaws on phones tend to get found every other day so odd are eventually it will get cracked.

as for pc what it will full disk encryption specially with windows is not as secure as partial disk encryption. but it will stop anyone from accessing the files on the hard drive without the password. once again an easy password on the encryption software will be easy to cracked and as time passes security flaws will probably be found.

If you only want to protect you browsing history or maybe a few things then a secure way would be to run tails on a thumb drive, install a flavor of linux and run a ramdrive or even run an encrypted virtual machine but once again it depends on what you want to protect and who your trying to protect it from...

usb drive has the advantage of ending in fire easily if you ctb