Factory reset doesn’t fully erase data, survey reveals:69% of Indians are hesitant to sell their phones; fear of data misuse

The smartphone resale market in India is growing rapidly, but data security concerns remain the biggest hurdle. According to a survey by re-commerce platform Cashify, 69% of consumers avoid selling their old phones due to fears about privacy. In this survey of 8,000 people, 74% said they feared misuse of personal data after selling their phone, although 56.6% of people have already sold or exchanged their smartphone, meaning resale has now become a common practice. According to Nakul Kumar, co-founder of Cashify, both participation and awareness are increasing, but the responsibility for data security still largely rests with the consumer.
He states that every device accumulates years of personal, financial, and identity-related information, so this responsibility should also be borne by organized platforms and policy frameworks.

8 in 10 people factory reset phones before selling
The survey indicates that the decision to sell a phone is no longer solely based on price. 45.3% of people cited data privacy and security as the most important factor, while only 29.5% prioritized price. 83.3% of people factory reset their phones before selling them, but 41.1% believe that this does not permanently erase data. 31% of people even succeeded in recovering deleted data. The survey also revealed figures related to trust. 68.6% of people said that their trust would increase in platforms offering certified secure data deletion, while for 83.3%, a data deletion certificate is a necessary condition.
More than half, i.e., 50.8% of people, are even willing to pay a small fee for this. 15.6% of people were unaware that secure resale options exist, while only 6.3% complained about buyer pressure. It is important to understand the difference between factory reset and secure deletion According to Mandeep Manocha, CEO of Cashify, most consumers mistake factory reset and secure data deletion for the same thing, which is incorrect. A factory reset only removes access to files and apps, but data can remain in the device’s hardware, which can be recovered using special recovery tools.
In secure or certified data deletion, data is overwritten multiple times, making it almost impossible to recover.