What To Do If Your Phone Has Been Hacked

What To Do if Your Phone Has Been Hacked

Antivirus software excels at preventing hacks, but there’s no guarantee it can boot a hacker out once they’re in your phone’s system. If our first suggestion doesn’t work, consider a more effective solution: resetting your phone.

How To Factory Reset iPhone

1. Launch the “Settings” app.
2. Select “General.”
3. Scroll down and tap “Transfer or Reset iPhone.”
4. Tap “Erase All Content and Settings.”
5. Tap “Continue” and enter your iCloud password to confirm.

Resetting your iPhone will remove all its content, including messages, photos, and apps, but you can recover some of them.2 Just make sure you back up the ones you want to recover before resetting your phone. To do that, go to Apple Account profile in the Settings app, then select iCloud. There, you can configure what to back up.

How to Retrieve Deleted Text Messages on iPhone

To give you one example, here’s how to retrieve deleted text messages after a factory reset.

1. After the reset, start setting up the iPhone using your iCloud account.
2. During the setup process, choose “Restore from iCloud Backup.”
3. Choose the backup that contains the messages you want restored.
4. Finish setting up your iPhone.

How to Factory Reset Android

1. Open the “Settings” app.
2. Select “About phone.”
3. Scroll down and find “Factory reset.”
4. Tap “Erase all data,” then enter your PIN to confirm.

Like with iPhones, all data will be removed, so ensure you have backup of files you want to keep. Since Androids are powered by Google, you can use Google Backup. You’ll usually find this option in the Settings app, under the Google menu. Once backed up, you can restore the selected items after the reset

How to Retrieve Deleted Text Messages on Android

Here’s how you can retrieve deleted text messages, for example, after resetting your Android.

1. Initiate the setup process.
2. Follow the on-screen prompts until you reach the “Copy apps and data screen.”
3. The next screen will ask you to use an old device. Tap the “Can’t use old device” option.
4. Sign in to your Google account and agree to the Terms of Service.
5. On the next screen, select what you want to restore and tap “Restore.”

Expert Tip: Android manufacturers use different user interfaces on their phones, and so the steps above may not exactly apply to your device. If you’re having trouble finding a specific menu, use the search function in the Settings app.