My phone (galaxy s21 ultra) got stolen and unfortunately I cannot erase the data on there since I don’t have access to the sim-card that is on it since it got stolen (it has 2fa). Should I be worried for my files? I have important personal files and images on there. Is there a way for them to open the phone even if it has a pin and it’s locked (I locked it using the smartthingsfind website).
Also, what can I do? I can’t track the phone and back up the files since it’s turned off.
It should be safe.
Any Android device shipped with Android 5+ has encryption turned on by default and since Android 10 File-Based Encryption is compulsory which is a stronger protection.
If they reset the phone, apart from formatting, the encryption key gets erased too. If they try to modify the software (e.g. rooting, custom recovery or ROM) the Knox bit gets triggered and the phone automatically deletes all your data as per my knowledge.
So if they don’t guess your PIN correctly or use an unpatched vulnerability, which is highly unlikely, they can’t access your data.
When Knox bit is trigger, it doesn’t automatically erase all user data, except Samsung Pay and a few other services using Knox security.
That’s good to know. Also from a quick search it seems that Samsung devices have by default locked bootloaders now, which means that my 2nd sentence in my 3rd paragraph is totally irrelevant because if they were flashing unofficial software or recovery they couldn’t boot it up anyway.
It also won’t trigger if you install a new OS correctly.