This Apples Juiced!

Before you consider selling your old iPhone, you may want to think about what you have on it. There are stories pooping up on the net of people (mostly using forensic software tools) retrieving data from used or second hand iPhones. There is no mechanism to clear off that “ancient” original iPhone when you trade up to a 3G version.

For those of you who will not keep your old iPhone "in house" so to speak, there is a simple process to minimize the chances of your data being retrieved by a stranger. It’s not perfect, but it’s easy and should offer enough protection for those of you forced to sell your once precious, but now obsolete device.

1.Restore the iPhone from within iTunes.

2.On the “Info” tab, un-check all options so you don’t synchronize calendars, email, bookmarks, and contacts.

3.On the Photos, Podcasts, and Video tabs, uncheck “Sync …”.

4.Create 3 big playlists at large as the storage capacity of your iPhone.

5.On the Music tab, select the first of your 3 playlists to sync. Make sure the storage bar at the bottom looks full after syncing.

6.Sync your iPhone, change to the next playlist, sync again, and repeat one last time.

This should overwrite any of the free space on your phone. Following the procedure outlined above should be more than sufficient to prevent casual recovery of sensitive stuff if you’d like to hock your “old” iPhone.

Discovery of a remote blacklist (killswitch) that gives Apple the ability to zap apps from your phone remotely has been making the rounds on forums and chat sites. While Apple was assuring the public that "it's only for zapping malicious or dangerous apps". Those among us who currently use Jailbreaker or Netshare were none the less concerned for their safety. For those who don't like the idea of Apple (or anyone else) periodically checking out their iPhone, what follows is a posted way to disable the feature, and assumes the phone has been jailbroken already. Their currently is no reason to believe that there is any real need for disabling the blacklist checker at this time. However, if you still want it gone then continue. I have not tried it and do don't take responsibility for any problems that this could cause down the road.

To disable the "kill switch", jailbreak your device if it hasn't been jailbroken already, and add the following into the location /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 iphone-services.apple.com