A data processing method includes: presenting one or more control elements on the touch screen, where the one or more control elements are in a one-to-one correspondence with one or more pieces of data; and encrypting or decrypting, based on fingerprint data obtained by the fingerprint recognition module, first data corresponding to a first control element when an operation of dragging the first control element from a location outside a second region to the second region is detected, where the second region includes at least a partial region of the first region. This can further complete operations of confirming that encryption or decryption is to be performed and performing authentication in one step, to shorten steps and time of a data encryption or decryption operation, thereby improving user experience.