Think twice before you sell your current iPhone

Damian Koh | May 21, 2008

Here's something all you iPhone owners out there should beware. Apparently, a firmware restore of the iPhone won't wipe clean all your personal data residing on the handset. But it will make you feel like you did.

According to developer Jonathan Zdziarski, "this means that when you do a restore through iTunes, it is only the equivalent of performing a 'Quick Format' on your iPhone. And for those of you who use 'Erase all Content and Settings', this has even less of an effect, as it doesn't even destroy the file system.

"In both cases, 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 NAND memory. 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".

That said, the data that was recovered was done using a forensics toolkit. Although that's hardly within the domain knowledge of most iPhone users, the disturbing part is that anyone with the right set of tools can recover your personal (supposedly) deleted data.

I'm not sure whether this is a genuine issue for those using hacked iPhones because syncing the handset with iTunes is something they know they shouldn't do. Unless they have all intentions to turn the iPhone into a pretty brick.

With the 3G iPhone expected to launch soon and recent reports of the iPhone's upcoming availability in several countries, people will have to start thinking about what they are going to do with their current Jailbreak set. Is this a cause of concern for you? Share your views in Talkback.

Via Engadget | Credit: Jonathan Zdziarski

Filed under: Mobile Phones
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stilopentolearn

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stilopentolearn says...
I appreciate your feedback on what to do with my Iphone purchased in Bangkok in Sept 2007 and Ziphoned with 1.1.4 I was fortunate since my phone purchased had a problem day one and i did a messy job back then trying to restore and it locked it had 1.0.2 then the dealer blamed me and didn't know what he was doing and did not speak much English he tried to unlock and gave it to me and it went black and he blamed me and said the 25500 baht would not be fixed or exchanged or given a refund on my Citibank NYC card even though both charged a fee for useage. After seven weeks waiting for word from Citcard they wrote sorry no credit for foreign transactions and I was shocked. The dealer thought I left the country and it was either switched or parts removed because when I finally went to the Police Station asking for help with my phone he showed up and blamed me and the police told him to return 20000 baht he refused and offered 2000 baht and the phone, so I was going to go to court and my interpertor suggested not to. So the deal went to 5000 baht and the phone and he said never talk to him again about anything. So I went back to MBK and finally found a mechanic that fixed it by opening it up and putting some part in and said the serial number on the box was not the same as on the Iphone. However he did fix it and I have since learned to Ziphone and upgrade and install and I am very fortunate to have it. I was thinking though to upgrade to the 3G but after reading your story I am skeptical of selling or trading. I hope that there is a way to clean out formatting some way? I await someone's ingenuity and also I write this to maybe help someone that might buy a phone here in Bangkok and to be careful where and who they buy from and to know if they have Citcard to not count on Mastercard of Visa to help with foreign transactions and know that they will abandon you.

May 27, 2008 02:49