Those naked selfies you thought you deleted? They could be accessed by your smartphone’s new owner

Remember those naked selfies you took years
ago? Well, someone may still be able to find
them after all.

Even if you’ve deleted them from your old Android
smartphone, researchers who managed to retrieve
images off handsets they bought from eBay have
claimed you’re still not safe.

Avast, a company that makes security software,
discovered more than 40,000 images from 20
phones that included half-naked women and
pictures of male genitalia.
They were able to access the images using basic
forensic security programs, despite users having
used factory reset which, although it wipes the
index that points to the data locations, doesn’t
eliminate storage areas that can be accessed
directly.

It means anyone who sells their phone could
potentially have their personal photos accessed,
as well as other sensitive information such as
addresses.

The Android OS maker Google said the versions
of its system from 3.0 onwards are more difficult
to hack once data had been deleted.
Newer iPhones and iPads are not thought to be
prone to the same issues due to the way their
data is encrypted, making it unreadable after a
reset.