Erasing SD Card contents and personal data

Question

I have an SD card in my Droid Global or Droid X, not exactly sure which model. I go to the files and click on the SD card instead of shred files and delete all of its contents. I then go to Privacy and click the Manufacturer Reset and also click the box to erase SD Card. My phone does a hard reset, and it turns back on.

After this process, what is readable on my SD card if someone took it and hooked up to a computer or anything else? If I hadn't done the reset, would someone be able to see text messages, phone calls, or browsing history if I've deleted them all from my phone?

Answer 1

The other answers are a little misleading.

First, it doesn't really matter from a security standpoint whether you've got things stored on the SD card or on the internal storage. The SD card is easier to remove and read outside the phone, but the internal storage can be read as well (most easily from the device itself but also from a PC).

The second thing is that I would expect this wipe to be insecure, i.e., file deletion rather than zeroing of the storage. (I haven't checked myself.) I recommend using a program like Eraser to zero your SD card. I don't have a good recommendation for the device storage, unfortunately.

Answer 2

When you do a hard reset, or a Factory Default Reset, it wipes your Phones INTERNAL storage completely. So anything that was saved on your phones internal storage, is pretty much gone.

Personal things such as : Texts, Phone Calls, and Browsing History, are not stored on your SD Card, but stored Internally. So doing that wipe will have cleared it out.

So you're fine. Your SD Card never really holds anything personal like that.

Answer 3

Nothing at all is on your memory card. SMS messages etc aren't actually stored on the SD card. When you do a hard reset all of your data is erased completely.