The German Commodity and Product Testing Authority has advised that personal data should be safely deleted from a smartphone or tablet before being disposed of or given to others to maintain privacy and data protection, otherwise strangers may be able to recover and exploit this data.

With all smartphones, German experts advised the need to make a backup copy of the personal data that the user will need in the future, and then remove the phone (SIM) card and memory card, so as not to forget it in the mobile device.

For Android phones: If the smartphone is encrypted, which applies to all modern smartphones, it is sufficient to return the smartphone to the factory settings to safely delete the data, and according to the smartphone manufacturer, the data deletion item is called “Delete all data” or “state delivery".

But with older models the user has to search for the "Encryption" item in the settings menu first under the "Security" menu and here he has to activate the encryption function before restoring to the factory setting.

Owners of iPhone and iPad smartphones can restore factory settings via the Settings menu under “General/iPhone Transfer/Reset” because Apple encrypts all devices from the factory starting with the iOS 7 version of the device. year 2013.

Experts emphasized that it is no longer important to actually delete the data while activating the encryption function, through the method of overwriting it as was the case previously, and there are more important things than that, such as deleting the key that unlocks the mobile device and memory when entering the lock code or reading the fingerprint , meaning that the memory cannot be accessed irreversibly, but only new data can be written to the memory from now on.