iPhone News Updated

Data fears over second-hand iPhones

iPhone owners who are considering selling their handsets through auction sites such as eBay have been warned that their phones may still contain personal information.

	Information’s the key: iPhone users may be selling device that contain confidential data

With the next-generation iPhone expected to be launched on June 9, many iPhone users are selling their devices to make way for the new handset.

However, carrying out a full “restore” of the iPhone through iTunes is not enough. According to security experts, this will not permanently erase the contents of the phone’s flash memory, and personal information can be easily retrieved if you have the right forensic tools.

It means that many iPhone users could unwittingly be selling devices that still contain confidential emails and personal data, such as bank statements.

Even Apple appears to be selling refurbished handsets with hidden data still on them. Several blogs report that an official from Oregon State Police was able to recover private data on a refurbished iPhone he had bought directly from Apple.

Apple has not yet released a tool or software update that will permanently delete all of the content in the iPhone’s memory, so many websites are suggesting their own methods of shredding confidential data. One solution is to restore the iPhone to its factory-fresh setting using iTunes, and then re-fill the device with enough songs to hit the storage capacity limit on the handset.

Although recovering this hidden data requires specialist forensic software, security experts worry that unscruplulous people could start buying second-hand iPhones in an attempt to trawl them for information.

“All of the personal information that was sitting on the device prior to the erase or restore is still left sitting in the unallocated blocks of the iPhone’s memory,” said Jonathan Zdziarski, a well-known iPhone developer and the creator of the forensic toolkit that exposed the problem. “To make matters worse, the restore process is likely to restore the original operating system files over the same location as the old ones, meaning very little data is likely to be corrupted at all.

“Let this be a caution to everyone who sells used iPhones or sends their phone into Apple - you are releasing your personal data with it.”

[Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/05/22/dlapple122.xml]