Quote:
Originally Posted by stumped
also, just putting a reasonable selection of apps onto a 16Gb tablet will almost fill it, thus overwriting almost all the available storage...
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This is not correct. Flash memory is difficult to overwrite. Your Fire Tablet with 16Gb of listed memory may have well over double that in the memory chip. Flash memory microcontrollers are sophisticated little parts that use wear leveling algorithms to map out used cells and map in spare cells over time.
Bottom line, it is not a simple task to wipe flash memory. Some is harder than others (e.g., SSD's). You could possibly do many many wipes and eventually get most of the wear leveling mapping overwritten. But this could also significantly diminish the memory lifespan.
If you are worried about highly sensitive data being protected from a determined hacker you need to destroy the device. Protection of minorly sensitive data from casual observation is simpler, and a factory reset may be OK - but I don't know the details of what a Fire user accessible "factory reset" does. Does it actually try to do any wipe at all, or just free up the cells for use? My assumption is that is does not do any wiping, but that is a question for the developers of the Fire tablets.