Your iPhone is Capturing and Storing Screenshots of Your Every Move   9/15/2008 - 696 views, 2 Comments

Summary: Did you know that your iPhone is capturing and storing screen shots of everything you do? And while we can assume (and hope) that it deletes it as soon as it not longer needs the information, it could be relatively easy for forensics experts to uncover - essentially "undelete" - that information.

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Did you know that your iPhone is capturing and storing screen shots of everything you do? And while we can assume (and hope) that it deletes it as soon as it not longer needs the information, it could be relatively easy for forensics experts to uncover - essentially “undelete” - that information.

That’s the unsettling discovery announced by Jonathan Zdziarski, an expert in data forensics, and himself an iPhone hacker.

The reasoning behind the constant screen captures is so that the iPhone can give you that cool fading effect whenever you press the ‘home’ button from anywhere on the iPhone. So from wherever you are, it is storing that information so that it can give you that cool effect.

According to Zdziarski, “There’s no way to prevent it. I’m kind of divided on it. I hope Apple fixes it because it’s a significant privacy leak, but at the same time it’s been useful for investigating criminals.”

By “investigating criminals”, Zdziarski presumably means that because the screenshots capture everything that the iPhone is doing, the screenshots will capture “bad” uses of the iPhone, as well as capture what someone who steals or hacks into the iPhone is doing with it.

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2 Comments »

  1. People have no idea what’s happening to their civil rights. They are far to busy buying new gadgets. The world is becoming very transparent for everyone except those in government. Good post! Hope people read it.

    Comment by Perry — 9/15/2008 @ 5:22 am

  2. The best way to sneak a noose on a victim is to line it with fur and tell them how nice it would feel.
    Goto ur setting onto your cell phone and turn off the location option, otherwise ur cell phone co. (and anyone else looking for you) can see where you are.

    Comment by Manny G — 9/19/2008 @ 4:29 am

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