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I've had a Samsung Galaxy filled with thousands of sensitive financial documents, which I've been using as a pocket computer pretty much, in order to reference them each time I need to throughout the day.

It's heavily debloated, de-Googled, I've had the Secure Startup device encryption enabled in case I'd lose it and a firewall (NetGuard) installed to prevent data leak for when it had to connect to the internet.

I wish to sell this phone now (or rather, give it away for free to someone who might). So, that means decrypt it and hard reset it.

Is there anything I can do programmatically (e.g., via ADB) to further wipe data? Something we would do to a computer hard drive, for instance, like secure wipe/zero out its data?

yin8219
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  • What Galaxy phone are you talking about (ai don't thing you are talking about the original Samsung Galaxy)? You don't need to decrypt the device. Just perform a factory reset. This will erase the decryption key and all the encrypted data will be unrecoverable. You can check that after factory reset the files are gone. – Robert Jun 27 '21 at 18:18
  • @Robert It's an S9+ and apparently there's another S8 that I was using for the same purpose, like a year ago, forgotten in a drawer. Basically, what you are saying is keep them encrypted and simply perform a hard reset? That will do? – yin8219 Jun 30 '21 at 13:22
  • Yes. If you are unsure, perform the factory reset from within running Android (not via recovery) and then after factory reset skip most of the first start wizard and check if you can see any files. Because of the encryption if the files are no longer to be seen they are unrecoverable gone after a factory reset. – Robert Jun 30 '21 at 14:06
  • @Robert Can you explain why I should reset from within the Settings menu and not via Recovery? In the past, I've always used Recovery for this purpose. Specifically, I'd use Wipe cache partition, then Wipe data/factory reset and finally Reboot system now. – yin8219 Jun 30 '21 at 20:09
  • Search the internet for "factory reset protection" (FRP) and you will know why. – Robert Jul 01 '21 at 01:42
  • Ok, I looked up FRP and from an article I found, I'm quoting: "If you try to reset a phone through the bootloader, FRP will kick in, and it can't be set back up without the previous account's password." —— As I mentioned in OP, my phone is deGoogled, so I am/was logged in with no Google Accounts. Is in my case in-Settings reset and Recovery reset, one and the same thing? edit: Also, no Samsung accounts ever. – yin8219 Jul 01 '21 at 13:36

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