Smartphones and Not So Smart Information Leaks
It's hard to deny the advantages of smartphones: email, Internet access, databases of contacts, and oh yes, a phone. One of the downsides of smartphones is that as computers, they are subject to security attacks, like malware. The Washington Post ran a story over the weekend about another problem: inadvertently disclosing data. Even users that "delete" data can leak information because the information it's not really gone after all.
The article goes on to describe the kind of information discovered from smartphones purchased from eBay, including "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, medical prescriptions, and receipts for utility payments." Like deleting a file on your computer, deleting information from smartphones flash memory just removes a reference to the information, it does not overwrite it. For that, you need to do a factory reset or similar operation.
WirelessRecycling.com's Cell Phone Eraser Tool has instructions for many models.
An earlier posting argued for better user training. Here is a case in point.
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