[LINK] Your mobile secrets uncovered

[David Boxall]

Looks like a sledgehammer's the only way:
<http://www.smh.com.au/news/mobiles--handhelds/articles/mobile-secrets-uncovered/2008/10/04/1223013844100.html>

> *Millions of phones are lost and discarded with their personal data 
> every year ...
> *
> It's almost impossible for the average person to wipe a mobile phone 
> clean: unlike a PC, which has an open architecture, mobile phones are 
> closed books in terms of where data resides.
> ... we very quickly create intensely personal relationships with these 
> devices. Just how personal those relationships can be was shown by one 
> BlackBerry recovered in Australia.
>
> It revealed its owner, a businessman, lived in an upmarket part of 
> Sydney. It also contained the details of his various businesses, 
> including bids and contracts under negotiations, uncomplimentary 
> comments about employees, an extensive list of contacts and a complete 
> log of phone calls and diary commitments.
>
> It even held extensive and lurid exchanges with his mistress.
>
> ... The problem is very few of us take any care to secure them against 
> loss or theft.
>
> During the next few years, the phone industry hopes to tempt us with 
> new devices that will be able to hold huge amounts of information, 
> while the financial services industry aims to turn mobiles into 
> payment devices that incorporate credit cards. Nearly all of them are 
> designed so they can be linked to a computer to exchange and back up 
> data or music. When they do, virtually by default, they will exchange 
> information from your address book and your diary.
>
> ... Two years ago Communications-Electronics Security Group, the 
> technical wing of the British Government's eavesdropping organisation, 
> Government Communications Headquarters, which is responsible for 
> advising the government on technology vulnerabilities, was privately 
> briefing that mobile phones cannot be wiped.
...
> "The life expectancy of a mobile device is only slightly longer than 
> that of a butterfly," he says. "People only hold on to their own 
> phones for around 12 months; corporate devices go for 24 months. But 
> when they are finished, the devices are not generally considered to 
> have any intrinsic value to the organisation. When they reach the end 
> of their effective life, they do not appear to be given any 
> consideration with regard to the data that they may still contain."
...
>
> Do you know where your last mobile phone is now?
>
> And whether it was wiped clean before you got rid of it?
>

-- 
David Boxall                    |  In a hierarchical organization,
                                |  the higher the level,
                                |  the greater the confusion.
                                |                     --Dow's Law.