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Ok so are you arguing to Joe Public or for Dave Hacker? You can't have it both ways. Somebody who can desolder and resolder a flash chip to a good device isn't

Ok so are you arguing to Joe Public or for Dave Hacker? You can't have it both ways. Somebody who can desolder and resolder a flash chip to a good device isn't likely to forget their freaking iCloud recovery questions or password. Conversely, someone who does or rolls without iCloud isn't likely to have the skills to recover data in this way.

cyphar 8y ago
> Ok so are you arguing to Joe Public or for Dave Hacker? You can't have it both ways. I'm arguing for Joe Public. Whether or not you can desolder or resolder a flash chip impacts whether Joe Public will be able to find a repair shop (run by a Dave Hacker) that can recover his data -- I wasn't arguing that Joe Public should be desoldering chips from his phones motherboard. There are repair shops that recover data from Apple devices, but the fact that the chip is paired to the CPU means that (in the case of water damaged devices) you need to get the board to boot successfully with a working touch-screen in order to pull the data off via USB. If the CPU is dead then your data is gone, even if the flash chip is still fully functional. If you had the same situation with a Samsung device, you can remove the flash chip and place it into an "enclosure" that pulls the data off without needing to fix the broken phone. And I completely agree that pairing the flash chip to the CPU is more secure against attackers taking your data if they've got hold of your phone. But it does mean that the phone is inherently less repairable -- which consumers should be aware of because it does affect them (even if they are just "a user").