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Secret agents in training and anyone else who assumed that deleting an email on an iPhone meant that it would actually be deleted should take note. On iPhone 3.0, deleted emails are easily viewed, even after you've emptied them from the trash. How's it done?
You can view a YouTube video of this frightening revelation right here, but if you're more of the read-it than watch-it type, here's how you can play along at home.
Fire up your iPhone and delete an email you don't want anyone else to read. Don't half-ass it though, be sure to go into your trash and remove the message. Now that you've eradicated the incriminating message, head over to the main Spotlight search screen and search for the subject line of the email you just deleted. Proceed to read both the subject and entire contents of said email message, and feel free to mutter a few obscenities.
According to Gizmodo, Apple is fully of aware of this security SNAFU and will "probably" include a fix in iPhone OS 3.1 (3.1 beta doesn't appear to suffer this same flaw). In the meantime, some have reported getting deleted messages to disappear by viewing them 3 or 4 times, but only do this if you for realsies want your deleted email to actually be deleted.
Comments are closed on this article
Vegan
August 19, 2009 at 6:37pm
You people and your fancy phones that do email. I'm lucky my phone has a color screen and does text messaging. It has also been mistaken for a leg tumor while in my pocket.
vaemor
August 19, 2009 at 4:44pm
People keep calling it a security issue. Technically it's not a security issue, it's only a privacy issue.
If it were a security issue, it would more likely have to be an actual security flaw in the code that would allow someone on the outside to do something you dont want to your machine. Well, the only way someone can do something remotely like that for this "privacy" issue, is if they 1) physically had your iphone/touch, 2) knew your passcode, and 3) wanted to read your e-mails (if they knew about this)
Considering the necessities for pulling this off, this is a VERY small and unalarming "privacy" issue. If it ever gets fixed in some future patch version for the iphone/touch I wont lose any sleep over it.
nekollx
August 19, 2009 at 6:00pm
This is one of the new 'features' of 3.0. Apple and Big Brother are secretly keeping your emails. Sending them to the FBI when you think your deleting them!
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