

 The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out?  - araneae
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427301.100-the-pocket-spy-will-your-smartphone-rat-you-out.html

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protomyth
XKCD gives a nice glimpse of one possible problem <http://xkcd.com/596/>

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NathanKP
That's a classic.

But seriously this article does make me think about netbooks and other
portable devices. If a stolen cell phone could yield so much information how
about a stolen computer?

It seems to me that when you keep so much of your life on an electronic device
you are naturally going to be vulnerable in multiple ways.

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protomyth
I agree with you. Right now, the notebook / netbook would cause a lot more
damage, but I think that might be shifting with all these apps we put on our
cellphones. We really have no idea how secure the data in each of these apps
are, and standard stuff like encrypted file systems are not a user option.

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abalashov
I do not think this is a "puff piece." I think there is a legitimate concern
here that falls - aside from phishing scams and obvious privacy implications -
into the province of:

    
    
       * Crooked cops and unscrupulous prosecutors - 1
       * Defendant - 0
    

If even SMS messages can be recovered despite having been deleted, that's a
lot of forensic trail nobody should have. Law enforcement investigating a
person who is not currently accused of a crime and for whom an arrest warrant
is not issued should be entitled to examine communications occurring from the
moment they are granted (by a court order) a tap request and it is
implemented, NOT communications having occurred prior to that point.

This dangerously changes the balance of power.

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siculars
obvious puff piece on being afraid of your cool new tech... clearly all tech
should come with a surgeon general's warning proclaiming:

"warning: entrusting this device with your personal information may be
hazardous to your health"

I couldn't really tell but it looked to me like none of these phones were
'locked' with a password that wipes your phone after so and so many incorrect
log in attempts. Also, the guys are professional data recovery guys who work
with the police and they had physical access to the devices which means they
could have bypassed the soft lock entirely.

q: what kind of 'wipe' does the iphone and bb do when you hit the lock reset
limit? is it like a multi-write to the 'disk', which is obviously ram based
and not platter based. does the multi-write work for such devices?

