I was wondering,
If one has password protection for android phone, so that it asks password everytime one wakes up the screen or reboots, is there any way, and i mean any damn way or any hack that anyone can access the internal storage of the phone in case it is stolen.
Eg, one has data on the internal storage not sd card. and the phone is pass protected under menu....settings.....location and security. In case the phone is stolen is that data accessible.??? in any way.
Can the phone even be used in any way without hard resetting?
get seekdroid from the market i think thats what u looking for
Not actually,
I am on the other side. I have confidential data on my phone. Phone is password protected as provided in android OS.
There are cases of theft where i live, I just dont want the data to be leaked. Its better i put them in my pc rather than phone if the phone can be hacked even without the pass.
I felt it was impossible to crack the phone if it is password protected and the thief does not know it. The only way is to hard reset which will delete the data and thats all i care.
?????
If the phone has a custom rom.... very easy.
1. Stick a new rom on an external SD and pop it in the phone....
2. Boot into recovery and flash the new rom...
3. Ta-Da! No more password and the SD contents are still in tact.
Lets just make it simple.
I have a rooted device but stock ROM. No external sd card. Only data stored on internal memory of the phone. PHoien is locked via password security under android. No clockword recovery type feature installed.
So if it gets stolen.....can someone access the phones internal memory without knowing the security pass.????
well... u should probably have it on a password protected usb drive... problem solved. why would some one steal your usb? keep it on your keys
Related
Hi, I have a HTC 7 Pro that I believe has partially corrupted data on the SD card causing it to fail to boot.
If you try and start the phone it just hangs on the HTC splash screen but if you remove the SD card or replace it with another it will boot windows to the point of getting the corrupted, changed or missing SD card message and won't let me access the o.s, just emergency calls.
This leads me to believe that the data has some kind of corruption on the SD card that is loaded as windows boots and rather than giving the error message its actually crashing the boot.
The physical SD card is not important to me but the data that is on the phone or SD card (I know its spread a cross the two and encrypted to that device) is important and desperately want to get anything I can from the phone if its possible.
The data I want is photos and videos, there loads I could loose without really caring but I had the only photos and videos of our daughters 3rd birthday on it and due to my pc suffering Mainboard failure, I had not been backing up to one of my drives. I don't use auto upload on SkyDrive as it does it automatically regardless of weather your on WiFi or your mobile data and I don't want it hammering the mobile connection!
like it was done just to wind you up, Windows phone SkyDrive app also makes you upload files one by one rather than being able to select groups of files and upload at same time so I did not back up via SkyDrive manually when on wifi cos it was insanely long winded, agghhhh!
So what I would like to know is of any method at all that I could read the content of the phone without booting it?
With the card out, the phone will boot to the point where it has loaded the bulk of the o.s and things like the battery meter, WiFi icon, locks screen ECT are all working but just won't let me past the error screen.
I also fear the main of what I want is on the SD card which is preventing it booting at all if installed so reading the phone in b loader seems like the only option if its even possible.
Any help on this would be massively appreciated.
Thanks, Steve.
Hey all,
I just discovered the option to encrypt my external SD card in Android. I like the idea as without it anyone can get data off my SD card if they steal my phone.
However, if my device ever dies presumably that card will never be recoverable as the decryption keys will be lost with the dead device. Is there anything I can do pre-emptively to protect myself from this scenario?
Presumably the encryption keys are stored on the phone somewhere. Can they be backed up and stored on my PC or something to ensure I can always recover the SD card later?
Hi all, I have had my S8+ for several months now, everything was fine until this morning when I woke up to unlock my phone, it unlocked as per normal. I enabled wifi and opened google chrome and checked the weather. The, the phone shutdown and within a few seconds the blue screen appeared with a message (erasing). It took a while for the phone to boot up and go through the initial setup like a brand new phone.
Now, all the data on the phone and my 32GB micro SD card are gone. I have tried half a dozen recovery software on my PC but none can see any files on the micro SD.
I have no idea what happened and why it has wiped the micro SD card. I have lost images and videos of the last few years, I know silly not to have them backed up.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Wow, that is a great disappointment losing all that personal info. I suspect you are running a recovery software app from a PC or a Mac? If you are not getting any meaningful results from the data restore apps, and you know those apps to be of good/high reputation, then I am wondering of your phone uses a type of 'wipe' function that performs a military/DOD sort of erase?
If that is the case, that stuff is likely gone forever. If that is not the case, hopefully you can find another app to try and restore your stuff.
Now, on the other note, that's an odd behavior for your phone to just reboot and do it's thing, wiping your system. Do you have any type of security going where it might have thought the phone had been stolen, and performed a wipe as protection for the owner. . . (you)?
Good luck.
I do have company email on my phone and I have agreed to their security policy which wipes all your data. This could be one of the reason, however could they erase data from SD card?
I had over 60GB of personal files on it and I thought the SD card will not get wiped in any case.
I have been reading around but can't find any solution. Stuffed to the max.
gunner007dc said:
You can check the phone's memory - sometimes it has a "SD RESTORE" folder if it backed up anything.
By chance is this a company phone, or had a company e-mail on it? Sometimes those e-mails require device administrator and can be remotely wiped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good info.
gunner007dc said:
You can check the phone's memory - sometimes it has a "SD RESTORE" folder if it backed up anything.
By chance is this a company phone, or had a company e-mail on it? Sometimes those e-mails require device administrator and can be remotely wiped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, where would I find this folder? I have checked by can't find it.
Android Version: 8.0
Root: No.
I use my phone mostly to recieve A LOT of work documents, photos, audio, etc via whatsapp.
So, i thought in get a SD card and format it as internal storage, since what i need is just a lot of storage to save as much data as possible, not gaming or anything of the sort.
The issue is, since it's formatted as internal storage, connect phone to PC via USB won't let me see the content and i have no way to transfer from PC to phone OR from phone to PC.
I want to know how to transfer whatsapp photos/documents/audio/etc on a phone with SD card formatted as internal storage to a PC (without dropbox, google drive or other cloud service, since this is work data it's a big no-no to use cloud sharing), or if it's just not possible. Same if it's possible to send files from PC to phone.
Don't know. If you can't directly access it and use recovery software instead it will make a mess of the data ie no file structure. (Edit, see post below.)
In the future don't use it as internal memory, it's too slow for one thing especially write speeds.
Apps, DCIM and download folders go on internal.
All critical data goes on the SD card. The DCIM folder data is regularly transferred to the SD card but never name that SD card folder DCIM.
The SD card is then redundantly and regularly backed up to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
@Flonne
While adopting a storage, whether an SD card or USB drive, Android formats and changes it’s FAT32 or exFAT format to ext4 or f2fs.
With Adoptable Storage, Android encrypts the external SD card or USB drive being used as internal storage, thus, it gets tied to a specific Android device. The key used to encrypt the data on the SD card is stored on the Android device’s internal memory. So, it is NOT possible to mount the adopted storage to another device because of its encrypted nature.
The adopted storage becomes an extension to Android's internal /data partion what at any time can get accessed from PC.
I broke my screen and when I connected to pc through adb i was hoping to access the sdcard. it was formatted as internal, i didnt know better at the time.
somehow it got factory reset and i didnt know. ordered new screen and booted up and it was reset ahhh. memory card says needs formatting. phone has lineage and is or can be rooted and phone works fine.
in this case, is there any way to access the sdcard ?
thanks.
RowlyRowl said:
I broke my screen and when I connected to pc through adb i was hoping to access the sdcard. it was formatted as internal, i didnt know better at the time.
somehow it got factory reset and i didnt know. ordered new screen and booted up and it was reset ahhh. memory card says needs formatting. phone has lineage and is or can be rooted and phone works fine.
in this case, is there any way to access the sdcard ?
thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it was factory reset then the encryption keys were lost. Not retrievable.
thanks for the reply. i will stop crying and move on. i like closure.
RowlyRowl said:
thanks for the reply. i will stop crying and move on. i like closure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It sucks. I've lost a 30 yo database that was irreplaceable. Just play time in the hurt locker...
Always backup critical data redundantly and regularly to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. Never encrypt data drives.
yah i try but was motorbiking in baja mexico for a month and lost all the pics and all my text messages. nothing critical like an old db but still lots of fun memories ... im old and need pics to remember
but everything went wrong. i think i recently updated the phone with lineage and when i came back adb wasnt authorized anymore so i couldnt access the phone for data copy. usb-c to hdmi didnt work... could have been so simple if things just worked ... android has become as frustrating as my one and only iphone 3g . thanks again.
RowlyRowl said:
yah i try but was motorbiking in baja mexico for a month and lost all the pics and all my text messages. nothing critical like an old db but still lots of fun memories ... im old and need pics to remember
but everything went wrong. i think i recently updated the phone with lineage and when i came back adb wasnt authorized anymore so i couldnt access the phone for data copy. usb-c to hdmi didnt work... could have been so simple if things just worked ... android has become as frustrating as my one and only iphone 3g . thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can always carry two .5tb OTG flashsticks for backup. Not as reliable as hdds but much better than nothing.
Generally unencrypted SD cards are very reliable if not removed from the device. Sometimes important lessons come at a high cost.
Well, this is rather vexing.
I've been hard at work trying to backup / transfer data from my extremely old Samsung Galaxy S5 that seems to be coming to the end of it's useful lifespan. The S7 was next, but aside from running out of internal storage, I thought I still had time on that one (I wasn't experiencing a lot of slowdown or any crashes).
I went out for a couple hours (taking my newer phone), and when I came back, I saw my S7 on the insert the pin code screen. When I put the correct pin code in, the "unlocked padlock" stays on the screen for ages, before the phone restarts and I am shown the pin screen again (if I insert the wrong pin, it says so, so I am sure that I am not inserting the wrong pin).
So for the first time in my life, I am dealing with a spontaneous boot loop. This device has never been rooted, had a custom recovery installed or even the bootloader unlocked (it's the Exynos version, so presumably it would have been possible, but I decided that I wanted *one* unrooted device just in case, and given Knox, I decided that this was the device that will remain unmodded).
Anyway, that's for the story, but the question is, is there anything that I can try before the nuclear option (factory reset etc.).
Fortunately most of the photos are on the MicroSD. There are perhaps two or three apps that I would have liked to backup (they did not have a convenient built-in backup system) but I am just wondering if there is anything I might be able to do at this point? For instance, would wiping the cache be an option? Or is there anything I might be able to do with adb?
(Note: The device is running on Android 7)
Thanks.
Don't set security passwords for device access as you are the one most likely to be locked out.
If the boot loop wasn't caused by a hardware failure it's likely a app you loaded. Launchers and power management apps are prime candidates. Leave at least a couple gb of headroom on internal storage.
A factory reset is the easiest solution. Be careful what you load next time... take out the trash.
Use the SD card as a data drive, all critical data and everything you need for a reload goes here. No apps. Only apps, and the temporary download folder go on the internal memory.
The DCIM folder can be set to the SD card as well, but there can only be one DCIM folder and don't change its name. If a second backup folder is used on the SD card instead do not name it DCIM.
ApkExport can be used to make installable copies of apps for transfering them and added the data drive as well, no Playstore needed.
Do not use Kies or SmartSwitch when going between different type devices or OS versions. It can cause issues.
Cut/paste critical data, verify the data is readable and all there. Don't trust Kies or SmartSwitch with critical data.
Never clone data drives.
Never encrypt data drives.
Regularly redundantly backup the SD card data drive to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
Thanks for the reply.
1. No app was recently installed (past couple of weeks)
2. Hardware failure? Maybe, but it is rather out of the blue. Phone has not displayed any unusual behaviour, it hasn't been taken out of the house for a week or so (it is really in the process of getting retired). And I would like to ascertain it.
3. I am aware I can just nuke the whole thing with a factory reset, but before taking that easy option and effectively lose some data I'd like to retrieve if possible, I would like to other options.
And rather than tips on what I should've done or can do next time (much of which I am already doing), I am looking for advice on anything I might be able to try -before- nuking the whole thing.
For instance, could the log-files (there are quite a few of them) provide hint in what went wrong? Any option of re-installing the OS without wiping the data partition? Since I am on a fairly old version of Android I may also have the option of doing a minor update. That kind of things. I am thinking that there might also be the possibility that the system files somehow got corrupted and perhaps a re-install or system update might be worth trying.
I am basically looking for options that will not, for the time being erase the data partition. If it comes down to it in the end, then fine, but that is the last option not the first.
It sounds like it got spontaneously corrupted. Perhaps a flash memory cell failure. If so it may or may not be "self healing" with a factory reset or a reflash.
If you have ADB access you may be able to fix it.
Otherwise your options are limited to what's on the boot menu.
Try doing a hard reboot (simulates pulling battery).
If you try booting it a bunch of times it may go into go safe mode. I've seen that behavior in Android 9.
That's extent of my skills, sorry.
The reason why I posted how to prevent data lose is because sometimes that's all you can do.
Internal memory data I consider expendable, the SD card data... potentially expendable.