Refurb iPhone Memory Recovered, Identity Exposed

An Oregon State police detective was able to "recover email, photos, and other user data" from an "out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone," tuaw.com is reporting. While the procedure indeed requires forensic tools to carry out, there's no telling who has access to them and who hasn't. Therefore, it is being suggested that, with the new iPhone model on the way, it is better to be on the safe side.

Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the "iPhone Open Application Development", but also an iPhone Forensics Manual for Law Enforcement, writes, according to iPhone Atlas:

"A verified detective from the Oregon State Police notified me this afternoon that an out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone he purchased contained recoverable personal data including email, personal photos, and even financial information which he was able to recover using my forensic toolkit." He backs up his story with this image.

"The photos he sent me included the individual’s name, which I’ve blurred out myself," the developer goes on, "but if you’ve ever had to return a defective iPhone, you might recognize this inbox."

One reader commented: "Why not just erase/restore to make space, then fill it to capacity with music to overwrite every bit of memory? Do it again with different music if you feel the need."

Many are going to believe this is a safe solution. It's not! It has been proven that it takes a lot of writing and deleting the same blocks of memory not to be able to recover the original information anymore. Also, Jonathan Zdziarski notes that "there are only a couple low-level methods to format the NAND" but that he is "not sharing at the moment."

Why?

Tuaw.com also notes that with the new 3G iPhone on its way, current iPhone owners are likely to fill eBay's back yard with tons of second hand devices. Needless to say, it would be quite a disaster to expose these identities. So what the world needs now is a very ensuring solution that an iPhone's NAND memory has been completely and irrecoverably erased, so one could sell it and forget about it forever.

Any thoughts?

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