Originally Posted by Rdunn
We all know that absolutely all Apple employees would never be involved in harvesting personal data.
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Check under your bed lately? You never know who could be lurking there.
While the rest of Rdunn's post wasn't very clever, your response here was quite smartassian.
So you don't
worry about personal, or confidential, information being tossed around in the open?!
See how the rolling eyes make me look like an ass?
be a serious issue, depending on the technical details. This is a device that does a lot more than an iPhone; it has the ability to run a full suite of productivity apps allowing all manner of confidential data to be sitting on the device itself. How many companies do you think there are with confidential government contracts? Or other projects that are contractually deemed as confidential? Until specifics are made available about how data is stored and/or can be truly erased (not just remove the file pointers), this is not a device our company will allow anyone with access to such data to use. Or if they prove to be indispensable for some reason, they will be categorized "throw-away" devices, and will be destroyed if they become unusable. The problem is that would be expensive and wasteful.
Lost devices are a huge problem already (you can read any number of articles on that topic), but if there isn't a reasonably secure way to erase data from these devices, there are a number of markets where they just won't be usable. There are similar issues with iPhone, but they are easy to jailbreak and "nuke" before bringing in for service.
Originally Posted by allblue
Now that is a good point. Perhaps the advice should read 'Sync your data then erase the SSD before returning to Apple'. Incidentally, does anyone know how totally erasing data from a SSD compares to the multiple overwrites required to fully secure a hard drive?
An interesting question, but those kind of details wouldn't worry me as much as potentially having the data just sitting right on the device for anyone to see. For all we know, these devices will be sent to China for refurbishment. And we know they don't have any interest in digging for confidential information, like contact lists.
Originally Posted by DocNo42
Oh, and as for data - I think it will be safe to assume the iPad will be like the 3GS and all content encrypted - I would just do a restore on it before sending it on. That erases the encryption key for the rest of the device thus making the rest of the data on it inaccessible. Not a big deal, and part of the instructions on the page.
The encryption is not what it's cracked up to be. Read this:http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10295348-245.html
Let's hope OS 4.0+ will address issues like this.
Originally Posted by melgross
You should also wipe all personal stuff first. This should always be SOP. If you don't, then that's not smart. People are people and there's no point in taking chances.
Absolutely right. SOP. But the question is: what exactly does a "wipe" do? Just removing pointers to the files won't cut it, and DOD-secure deletion is a lot more time-consuming than the average Joe is probably going to want to do when they bring in a device for service.
The device isn't even available yet, so let's see what Apple comes up with.