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Mobile 'Remote Wipe' Thwarts Secret Service

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the cry-them-a-river dept.

bennyboy64 writes "Smartphones that offer the ability to 'remote wipe' are great for when your device goes missing and you want to delete your data so that someone else can't look at it, but not so great for the United States Secret Service, ZDNet reports. The ability to 'remote wipe' some smartphones such as BlackBerry and iPhone was causing havoc for law enforcement agencies, according to USSS special agent Andy Kearns, speaking on mobile phone forensics at a security conference in Australia."

7 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Secure wipes? by Infiniti2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are they secure wipes or can data still be gleaned?

    1. Re:Secure wipes? by mini+me · · Score: 2, Interesting

      iPhone also requires having a MobleMe account

      Or an Exchange account. Which can include the use of z-push, if Exchange is not your thing.

  2. Re:Hm by davidbrit2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They have one, apparently.

    "Hopefully our officers are putting the cell phones in a Faraday bag that is shielded, pulling the battery [out] and turning them off [before] getting them into the shielded laboratory."

  3. Re:Aww.. by KingSkippus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...if they are unable to gain access to these phones before they're remotely wiped, that's a bad thing. I don't understand why people think this is a good thing.

    Because if they are able to gain access to these phones before they're remotely wiped, then other people can gain access to your phone before it can be remotely wiped. 99.999% of those people do not have your best interest at heart. Probably 99.9% of them are thieves and criminals trying to screw you over. 0.099% of them are law enforcement officials overstepping the bounds of what is allowed by law. (But it would cost you tens or hundreds of thousands in legal fees to prove it in court, and you'd risk the chance that you get an idiot judge who sets a bad precedent for everyone else.)

    If we're lucky, 0.001% of them have anything to do with the president or counterfeiters, but really, I think that's being generous.

  4. Re:Aww.. by nicolas.kassis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Except the S.S. aren't the only one who could benefit from this information. I'm sorry for them but the reality is that the function is performing as advertised. The S.S. having a backdoor is just that much easier for crackers to get in your phone. Remote wipe is an important feature now that our phones hold much more info then they used to.

  5. Re:Aww.. by mysidia · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sometimes phones are configured to self-erase, if turned off, if the battery is removed, or if an incorrect password is entered 10 times. So pressing the power button can actually initiate a secure erase.

  6. Re:Aww.. by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you want to trust the government like that...

    I trust the government to some extent in my day to day life, everyone does. I just don't trust the government in this context.

    --
    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)