Encrypt Your Smartphone — Or Else

pin0chet writes "Modern smartphones contain ever-increasing volumes of our private personal data — from text messages to images to emails — yet many smartphone security features can easily be circumvented by thieves or police officers equipped with off-the-shelf forensics equipment. Worse, thanks to a recent California Supreme Court ruling, police officers may be able to search your smartphone for hours without a warrant if you're arrested for any reason. Ars Technica has an article exploring the legal issues surrounding cell phone searches and explaining how you can safeguard your smartphone from the prying eyes of law enforcement officers."

Comments

Re:How?

[teridon]

Blackberries can be securely encrypted, but it caused me a unforeseen problem.

I use my blackberry to filter incoming emails and alert me based on the message contents (or subject, sender, time of day, etc.) You can't do that with the default email program -- you have to get a third-party app.

Unfortunately, if you encrypt the phone, the third-party app can't read the incoming emails anymore. It seems to be a platform limitation. (If someone can prove me wrong, please do so!) I *want* to encrypt my blackberry, but it would then become basically useless to me.

I have a password on it, of course, but that's not nearly as good as using device encryption.