If you are looking forward to sell or give away your old Android device, you better make sure that it’s been completely scraped off of any vital or sensitive information. This includes the email that you’ve linked to your device as well as the apps that you’ve installed. That’s not all. You should also make sure that your device no longer stores any of your personal files such as your documents and notes.
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To be safe, you should also remove the files on your media folders. This includes your music, videos and photos. After all, it’s better to be safe than to let any of your personal or private information fall into the hands of identity thefts and data abusers.
Preparing your device for factory reset
In order to completely wipe off your data on Android, you’ll need to perform factory reset. By doing so, you are basically restoring your device to its original manufacturer settings. This will remove all of the accounts that you’ve associated to your device. It will also erase all of the data that you’ve stored on your phone or tablet’s internal storage.
Just keep in mind that once you’ve completely wiped off your data on Android, it can no longer be restored. So if you have some important data that you wish to keep, better back up them up first or transfer them to your new device or secure cloud storage.
After you’re done creating a backup copy of your data, simply go to your device settings then scroll down the list until you see the option for “Backup and reset”. In older Android devices, you may access this option by going to Settings > Privacy Settings > Factory Data Reset.
Moving on, simply click “Factory Data Reset” and check the option for “Erase internal storage” or “Format SD card”. This option will erase all of the data that you’ve stored on your device’s internal storage and external SD card. After which, review the cautionary message that is displayed on your device and if you don’t have any objections, simply tap the button that states “Reset phone” or “Reset tablet”.
After performing factory data reset, your device will reboot and you will see its welcome screen. If successful, you will usually be prompted to link your Android device to your Google account again but you can just leave it as it is.