People who buy a new Android phone and plan to sell or gift the old one should take note: erasing all of your personal data is a vital necessity for preventing identity theft. Even if you have manually deleted all of your messages, contacts and media files, determined users can still gain access to email accounts and even credit card information. In order to protect yourself, a factory data reset is needed to completely wipe your old device before parting ways with it.
Instructions
1. Access your privacy options by pressing "Menu," "Settings" and then "Privacy" on your Android phone.
2. Initiate the device wipe by tapping "Factory Data Reset." At the prompt to confirm the reset, tap "OK."
3. Leave the phone undisturbed while it completes the factory data reset; the device may power itself off and then back on in the process of doing so.
4. Confirm that all of your data has been purged. Do this by verifying that the device is prompting you to set up email accounts and enter other personal information. If so, the wipe was successful.
Tags: Android phone, data reset, email accounts, factory data