[edit] read new post at end of thread[/edit] Android: For 99% of the population. Encrypt the phone, do a factory reset. Done. Unless a government wants to spend dozens of thousands of dollars rebuilding a flash dump...! It’s good as dead data.
For phones that boot: it’s fairly easy.
Method 1: long but correct method
Factory reset Skip over account setup Upgrade to highest android available for the phone via settings Restart again (the upgrades restart the phone too) Go to settings -> security or the related term for the manufacturer Choose to encrypt the file system. Restart. —— Now do a hard reset into recovery mode. Each phone is different but but for most you hold power and volume down. Bing or google it to find out per model (android recovery mode) it can be a few seconds, or a few minutes, of holding buttons down. Once there the little android will show up with his chest open. Chose prompts with volume up/down and select with power. You want the equivalent of wipe and restore For ease of explanation: in human terms Each time you do this it kills off some number of cells by shifting block 0 right some number of cells. So not only are you destroying an encrypted partition, you’re overwriting part of the encryption table. No company including Celebrite has shown they can recover more than fragmented garbage after this. (if you really want to bork it for fun you can flash the recovery rom here too AFTER you wipe here). On most phones Updating the Rom from a non-existent one installs-> nothing. Lol. DOA
Method 2: The fast but tech way Assuming you have the connection cables for each brand (you can buy the Celebrite cable kits on ebay for under $50 Download Odin. Either load or reset the phone to get in. Go to settings Activate the developer menu. Usually about-> software version and tapping the info block 6-12 times but you can bing it. Turn on ADB. Load Odin Plug the phone into the computer and click the larger square in the top right of Odin. This will sync the phone to the software. In Odin 2 Then select encryption Erase Reset Flash (tap escape when the menu pops up to chose the image location)
In Odin 3 Auto reboot Re-partition F reset time Flash lock Phone boot loader update (tap escape)
Then for either click start and walk away Good thing with Odin is it’s totally scripted and automated, AND it won’t reset the settings on the app once it finishes. So just unplug the phone and plug in a new one. Down side is they all need ADB (Android debug bridge) activated on the phone. Most android phones can be screwed over with oden by not matching the phones up so you can just keep going on all the phones that allow you to click start. Skip the ones that don’t for now, and you can restart Odin to match those up individually after the first batch is done.
Oden will also work on many damaged phones phones you can’t power on alone. And even if you cannot access the settings via the phone to turn on ADB a repartition will royally screw up the phone. Again you’re flashing blanks so you’re clearing and overwriting.
If the phone is totally dead: email Chris and ask what their data destruction policy is. If they don’t have a system in place you can try GreenDisk. But you have to PAY for destruction.
Apple is easy because the entire system is encrypted. In newer cases where the user was smart just keep trying to access the phone until it self destructs. (Between 6 and 12 failed tries) Nice expensive paperweight.
For users who didn’t activate that option in settings or phones older than the 7... only one company in the world (Celebrite) ever got ANYTHING from an iPhone and even there they didn’t get it from the phone itself. They used strings, tags, hex values... bunch of tech stuff from the phone’s encrypted dump to access data that wasn’t on the phone itself. iPhones... just do a reset (if you can) and send them in to be scrapped. Nobody is getting anything off it. Don’t believe me? Just ask the FBI. ;)
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