I was a bit worried when I found out about this story, but I should have seen it coming. Engadget reports that people who are purchasing refurbished iPhones (from Apple, no less) are able to recover old data off of the devices using some freely available tools.
I’ve had to take my iPhone in to the Apple Store for issues twice, and both times, they simply replaced it with a new one. But you’d expect that they would have erased the data on the device first, right? Well, you need to format, write over the entire drive, and erase again if you want to make sure that your data can’t be recovered from a storage device. (To be absolutely sure, it’s a good idea to shred the drive, but that’s apparently not an option here.)
Apple’s technicians are apparently only doing a basic software format and reinstall, and dropping in a new SIM. That’s adequate in most cases, given that most of us don’t work for the NSA, and most people buying the devices aren’t too curious about said data. It sounds like it’s pretty difficult to really do anything about this, unless you can make good friends with the guys at the Genius Bar, and have them do a secure wipe for you. Something tells me that isn’t part of their usual routine.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2008\/05\/20\/iphone-security-refurb-iphones-still-have-old-data-on-them\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_b3baa1278930a3e875873bec5b217b77","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}