4 ms·

Do you have the same complaint about, as another user mentioned, not being able to recover your data when you forget the password to an encrypted drive? This i

Do you have the same complaint about, as another user mentioned, not being able to recover your data when you forget the password to an encrypted drive? This is a pretty disingenuous analogy. GP did not ask about recovering data from the device. GP asked about starting over from scratch. Most people do have the expectation that an old encrypted drive can be reformatted and repurposed without knowing the key.

joshuamorton 9y ago
True, but in this case, you're "encrypting" (or really, securing) your device, and not your data. (I realize this will be misunderstood because "encrypting your device" normally means encrypting the data on your device). The whole point of that is as an anti-theft measure (a stolen device [with a locked bootloader] cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission). It would be kind of silly if you could bypass that by saying "no look, its mine I just forgot the password.". Now admittedly, I'm unsure if you need to know the original password, or if you can change the password online and then reset it, but I think the second would work. As an aside, this I think fits into a trope I see repeatedly (and pretty much only on HN). I'm not making any judgement about whether being privacy conscious is good or bad. But I find it amusing when people state something like "This product is awful because I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> and then <some product was not useful, and my experience was notably less good than other people>."
- ksk 9y ago
  >cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission) Presumably the permission should come _before_ the reset? After the reset, all the data is gone anyway, and asking the password at that point seems pointless since > I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> I read it as - "I did a completely normal thing like performing a factory reset of a consumer device (something that people have been doing for over a decade)"
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >Presumably the permission should come _before_ the reset? After the reset, all the data is gone anyway, and asking the password at that point seems pointless since The point, in this case, is not to keep the data secure, but to disincentivise theft of the device. You cannot resell a phone that prevents someone from using the device. >I read it as - "I did a completely normal thing like performing a factory reset of a consumer device (something that people have been doing for over a decade)" To be clear, doing a factory reset wasn't the privacy-conscious thing. Using a throwaway google account to set up the device was. The flow in this case is that the phone will say something like "please enter the username and password of the old account on this device before logging in with a new user account." If they knew the password to their old account, there wouldn't be any issue. I factory reset devices fairly often and so I run into this a lot, and its not an issue because I know the password to the google account that I use.
    - ksk 9y ago
      I fully accept the premise that a theft prevention system will limit the users ability to do certain tasks. My point was that this feature should also have blocked the factory reset from happening in the first place. That way, your data is still there, but access is conditional on you having the right keys, and there are no surprises.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        >I fully accept the premise that a theft prevention system will limit the users ability to do certain tasks. My point was that this feature should also have blocked the factory reset from happening in the first place. It doesn't sound like that would have made any difference here (ie. instead of "I have a phone I can't use" the complain would be "I can't remove this old google account from my phone") And actually, as an anti-theft tool, you don't want that, since you want to be able to remotely factory reset your device in case it is stolen (ie. the find my phone features).

joshuamorton 9y ago

True, but in this case, you're "encrypting" (or really, securing) your device, and not your data. (I realize this will be misunderstood because "encrypting your device" normally means encrypting the data on your device). The whole point of that is as an anti-theft measure (a stolen device [with a locked bootloader] cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission). It would be kind of silly if you could bypass that by saying "no look, its mine I just forgot the password.". Now admittedly, I'm unsure if you need to know the original password, or if you can change the password online and then reset it, but I think the second would work. As an aside, this I think fits into a trope I see repeatedly (and pretty much only on HN). I'm not making any judgement about whether being privacy conscious is good or bad. But I find it amusing when people state something like "This product is awful because I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> and then <some product was not useful, and my experience was notably less good than other people>."

ksk 9y ago
>cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission) Presumably the permission should come _before_ the reset? After the reset, all the data is gone anyway, and asking the password at that point seems pointless since > I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> I read it as - "I did a completely normal thing like performing a factory reset of a consumer device (something that people have been doing for over a decade)"
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >Presumably the permission should come _before_ the reset? After the reset, all the data is gone anyway, and asking the password at that point seems pointless since The point, in this case, is not to keep the data secure, but to disincentivise theft of the device. You cannot resell a phone that prevents someone from using the device. >I read it as - "I did a completely normal thing like performing a factory reset of a consumer device (something that people have been doing for over a decade)" To be clear, doing a factory reset wasn't the privacy-conscious thing. Using a throwaway google account to set up the device was. The flow in this case is that the phone will say something like "please enter the username and password of the old account on this device before logging in with a new user account." If they knew the password to their old account, there wouldn't be any issue. I factory reset devices fairly often and so I run into this a lot, and its not an issue because I know the password to the google account that I use.
  - ksk 9y ago
    I fully accept the premise that a theft prevention system will limit the users ability to do certain tasks. My point was that this feature should also have blocked the factory reset from happening in the first place. That way, your data is still there, but access is conditional on you having the right keys, and there are no surprises.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      >I fully accept the premise that a theft prevention system will limit the users ability to do certain tasks. My point was that this feature should also have blocked the factory reset from happening in the first place. It doesn't sound like that would have made any difference here (ie. instead of "I have a phone I can't use" the complain would be "I can't remove this old google account from my phone") And actually, as an anti-theft tool, you don't want that, since you want to be able to remotely factory reset your device in case it is stolen (ie. the find my phone features).