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I have a Galaxy S9 that I will send to Samsung in a couple of days for the trade-in program and I want to delete everything on it in a way that it cannot be recovered even after a factory reset.

From my limited research, there are people who recommend encrypting the phone before doing the reset as this will ensure the data is just noise and unreadable after the reset. But there is no option on my S9 to encrypt the phone as I saw on the youtube videos, and after a quick search I found out that S9's are encrypted by default.

So is it safe to just factory reset it since it's encrypted by default anyway?

I'm not that good when it comes to tech and stuff, what would you guys recommend I do?

Thanks for the response.

Johnsy
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    See: How to make a complete factory reset, without anyone being able to retrieve my data? To be extra sure, just run through the setup wizard once after factory-reset (skip account setup then), and after everything's up reset again. Before the second reset, check if all stuff on the "internal SD" was really gone – and if you have an external SD card, remove it before sending in the device. I doubt anyone there will take the trouble of "forensic revocery" there, even if some data might be recoverable. Not worth the effort. – Izzy Jun 24 '20 at 08:26
  • @Izzy So basically what you're suggesting is I double factory-reset my phone? Okay I already did that. And before that first reset, I also set up the startup lock, and then I added biometrics fingerprint and face recognition for security, and then on lock I also added a PIN, password and pattern lock. Is this enough to make all the data unrecoverable? – Johnsy Jun 24 '20 at 09:06
  • I cannot say whether it makes recovery of (some) data impossible – but certainly unfeasible: considering the effort it would need, you'd only try it if you're pretty sure there's something worth it. A forensics expert might be able to fish something out, but would charge at least a 4-5 digit sum for it. I don't know you, so I cannot make your "risk assessment". If you're the boss of the CIA (or they have a "special eye on you"), or "just a simple boy", makes a huge difference here. For the latter, it should be fully sufficient under these circumstances. – Izzy Jun 24 '20 at 20:58
  • just delete a single file. now try to recover this file right after. good luck – alecxs Jun 25 '20 at 08:49

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