Refurbished iPhone Reveals Customer Data

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Posted May 20, 2008 at 11:24am by iClarified

An Oregon State Police detective confirmed to Jonathon Zdziarski that an OTB refurbished iPhone he purchased contained recoverable personal data.

Jonathon has posted about this on his blog:
A few days ago, I posted a discovery in that personal data remains intact (in deleted portions of the file system) following a full iPhone restore. As it turns out, Apple may not have been aware of this privacy leak either. A verified detective from the Oregon State Police notified me this afterrnoon 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. The photos he sent me included the individual's name, which I've blurred out myself, but if you've ever had to return a defective iPhone, you might recognize this inbox. The more sensitive information hasn't been posted here for obvious reasons.

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Below you can find screenshots of the recovered information:

Refurbished iPhone Reveals Customer Data

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4krzn - May 22, 2008 at 5:43am

Wow, is there a way to wipe out the private info before we sell our iPhones? someone should write an app for this.

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tatanka - May 20, 2008 at 12:58pm

Thats is not good. Apple should fix this Bud, lots of people are reselling there iphone to buy the new 3G, that means all the data has gone with the phone even though they have reformatted the iphone.