Security question

[Android Question]

I was just sitting here thinking about if my Android ever got lost/stolen and I thought of something that could be a security flaw, or I could be wrong.

My phone is rooted and when I hold down the power button with the volume down it takes me to the Revolutiomary boot screen

Here it says

Fastboot
Recovery
Clean Storage
Simlock

I have use this menu before to install roms, restore backed up roms etc. This was a while back and never went back there since until now.

But what if someone stole or found my phone and knew what they was doing, couldn't they just simply go into one of these options and wipe my phone clean and install their own rom?

 

[Hadron]

They could. In fact even with unrooted they could go into the recovery menu and wipe the phone. That's true on any android phone.

To be honest there's only so much you can do to defend against someone who really knows what they are doing. The main thing is to avoid theft of personal data, and if someone resets the phone they have at least solved that problem for you.

There are some security/location apps which can be installed to system on a rooted phone, so they would survive a factory reset. But if someone installs a new ROM then of course anything you have installed is toast. The only thing left is that if you notify your carrier they will block the phone and blacklist the IMEI, which means that it won't be useful to the thief (unless they take it to a country which doesn't share the IMEI blacklist).