Refurbished iPhones Still Retain Previous User Infor

Users who are looking to sell their current iPhone might want to take note of this. When users use the “Restore” feature from iTunes to erase their data from the iPhone, that data is not completely erased from the iPhone, as the data remains intact on an unallocated portion of the iPhone’s NAND memory, although its not readily readable.

As it turns out, even Apple’s refurbishing procedure doesn’t erase all personal data from the iPhone. In a report from an Oregon State Police Detective, the person was able to use an iPhone forensics tookit and retrieve some very sensitive personal data from a recently purchased refurbished iPhone.

Currently there isn’t any memory formatting utility for the iPhone, but iPhone developers are looking into a low-level solution to wipe the NAND memory from the iPhone. Until then, it would be prudent to manually delete all personal information from the iPhone before hitting the “Restore” button in iTunes.