I'm confused by all the arguments that this feature should exist. Of course it should exist. Re-read the OP: The bug isn't the remote wipe ability, the bug is l

I'm confused by all the arguments that this feature should exist. Of course it should exist. Re-read the OP: The bug isn't the remote wipe ability, the bug is leaving it up to the administrators of the server to decide whether to inform users that the feature exists. Google decided to do an end run around Apple's lack of support for push notifications by making Gmail an Exchange server. Until now, I had no idea that by going along with this I was granting Google remote wipe privileges on my phone. Sure, Google do not appear at this time to want to wipe my phone for any reason, but how is it that I've been unknowingly trusting them with this power? This privilege is decidedly non-obvious. When I connect to an email server I kind of expect that I'm giving someone, somewhere the ability to read my mail. That's "obvious," and I don't need a warning dialog. But what is obvious about granting Google the right to erase the pictures I've taken of my father-son Lego Jawa Sand Crawler project? Or my voice memos? Or the extensive notes I've been making of design ideas for my Javascript framework? Let's stay on topic, folks. The question to be debated isn't whether companies should have remote wipe privileges, it's whether a device should allow a user to grant such privileges without putting up a simple warning dialog.