If you thought a factory reset of your phone had deleted any incriminating images you may have had stored on it, we’ve got some bad news – they could still be accessible.
Researchers have managed to retrieve more than one thousands nude photos of men and women from Android devices, all of which seemingly had their memory erased via the factory reset function. The study saw the researchers purchase 20 second-hand smartphones and managing to recover data from 4 of them, collating a total of 40,000 photos from each of the phones’ previous owners. The company that conducted the study, Avast, reportedly used “advanced data retrieval techniques” to enter each device’s history, even though this history had seemingly been deleted prior to them being sold on eBay.
Google, creator of the Android OS, has released a statement claiming that Avast’s studies are not representative of current Android devices, noting that the researchers’ “findings do not reflect the security protections in Android versions that are used by 85% of users.” However, that means that if you’ve sold an Android mobile device in the past, there’s a chance that your photos could still be accessible from its buyer.
While the data retrieval techniques employed by Avast haven’t been revealed, now that this information is in the public domain you can bet that someone is digging out their old second-hand Samsung Galaxy and trying to figure out a way to crack it. Fortunately, those running Android version 4.0 or later are said to be safe from having their naked selfies exposed after a factory reset, so if your phone falls into that category, wipe the sweat from your brow and keep taking those dick pics, champ.
Photo: Getty Images
