Burn Your Cell Phone

A new AP article has hit the ‘net discussing the fact that you can’t truly delete all the info off of your cell phone. Apparently, a company called Trust Digital bought 10 different phones on eBay and tested the phone-security tools that they sell to buisenesses. These weren’t old $5 Nokias, either. They were all “capable of working with corporate e-mail systems.” Among the uncovered material was:

  • One company’s plans to win a multimillion-dollar federal transportation contract.
  • E-mails about another firm’s $50,000 payment for a software license.
  • Bank accounts and passwords.
  • Details of prescriptions and receipts for one worker’s utility payments.
  • They also got some pretty hot details of a secret romance.
  • So what’s the lesson here? Flash memory is not so good at deleting info. In fact, it’s pretty bad at it. And if somebody really, really wants to find out what you’ve been up to, they can. Great. Something else to be paranoid about.

    Cell phones won’t keep your secrets [CNN.com]