Who’s reading your information?
Somewhat related to Wendy’s recent entry, I’d like to address an important issue: control and information security. With advanced mobile devices, it is possible to store various applications and fill the device with personal information. As Wendy pointed out, it should also be easy to remove/delete applications — and it should be easy to erase private information as well.
A company did an experiment: they bought a number of smart phones from eBay, and checked if they can retrieve personal information from the devices (see their news bulletin).
And they succeeded.
Bank accounts and passwords. Business plans. Personal messages. Calenders. Contacts. And then some. Some of the devices were re-set to factory settings before they were sold second hand, as described in the user’s manual. But it was still possible to dig up the personal information. The same kinds of cases have been reported on computer hard drives for years. This may be both a software and a hardware issue, but nevertheless - it’s an issue that must be considered.
Fact is: user’s invest real money in the devices. When moving on to a new model, they want to sell the old device or give it to a friend or a relative. They should be able to feel secure to pass the device on: how many of you would feel good in buying a new device of the same brand if you just heard your nerdy nephew was able to dig up everything you thought you just deleted?
There must be a better method of “just being sure” than tossing the device to the microwave oven for a few minutes!
Uh-oh. We’ll look into this.
Please can you ask Nokia to provide a “really-delete-everything” application for S60 phones? People could download it when selling their phones on and not worry about this sort of privacy problem.
Wayne, will ask.
Feel free to send suggestions what kind of feature you would exactly want. I can’t make any promises, but we are listening
How about using the factory format keypress combination that exists already, or at least has existed on Symbian devices?
I agree with the above anonymous poster in principle , but the hard phone reset keypresses are being described by Nokia as something that should only be used as a last resort, and preferably only by service technicians.
Also, some obscure key combination might not be the most user friendly solution?
But such an app is clearly needed, no matter what implementation is chosen.
I find it pretty lame that the “reset to factory state” doesn’t actually wipe the whole memory blank.
It’s really misleading, and Nokia should obviously either fix this in the future firmwares for existing products _and_ provide the adequate tool to properly erase the memory for those who can’t have the firmware upgraded before selling their (smart)phone.
In these days of identities being stolen then it is very important.
Abit disconcerting but i doubt nokia will do anything to rectify the problem in th enear future because the dont listen to valid user suggestions..i.e extended life battery for N91
I suggest you try as much as possible to not store confidential info on the phone. Its obvious but worthy.
So is the problem resolved if one does a hard reset of a s60 handset?
As long as you don’t trust the “hard reset” to wipe all data without checking it, then no worries. That’s like believing that your unshredded personal documents are safe once you’ve put them in the bin.
I routinely sell my used electronic gadgets on eBay and before that I passed them on to friends once I’d upgraded.
I’ve always followed a simple process:
- transfer data to new device and confirm ok.
- hard reset old device, formatting any memory cards etc.
- check through old device ensuring all data wiped.
- hard reset again
- advertise and sell.
As for putting a secure wipe function in consumer electronics, I can’t see how such a thing could be completely secure (unless it’s going to be a multiple military-style wipe and format) so why bother. Alternatively, if the data’s that private, then it’s worth far more than the second-hand value of the phone so do what I do with old hard drives - take it apart with a hammer!
So what is wrong with “multiple military-style wipe and format”? Just write random numbers over every block in the the internal Flash and memory card - a few times if you worry about really determined opponents.
Simple and effective.