Life, Mobile Phone

The advantage and disadvantage of encrypting your mobile phone

Why Would You Want to Encrypt Your Phone?

When you power on your , you’ll have to enter the encryption PIN or password, which is the same as your phone’s lock-screen PIN or password. If someone doesn’t know the encryption PIN or password, they can’t access your data.

This is ideal if your phone contains particularly sensitive data, an attacker won’t be able to access the data without the encryption key, although the dreaded freezer attack is always a possibility.

Before you enable encryption, be aware that there are some drawbacks:

Slower , encryption always adds some overhead, so your device will be a bit slower. The actual decrease depends on your phone’s hardware.

Encryption is One-Way Only: After encrypting your device’s storage, you can only disable encryption by resetting your phone to its default settings. This will also erase all the data stored on your phone, so you’ll have to set it up from scratch.

Not everyone should enable encryption, as it will do more harm than good for many people. If you forget the password or PIN when you encrypt your , it is hard to find back.

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