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I may be overly optimistic, but who are you expecting to dig your dead phone out of the garbage, take the flash storage out and read it for your personal photos

I may be overly optimistic, but who are you expecting to dig your dead phone out of the garbage, take the flash storage out and read it for your personal photos? If the phone belonged to the president or something that's a potential threat, but for a random individual's data?

ballenf 3y ago
The bigger threat, imo, is a device that is still authenticated or trusted by some service I've forgotten about. A bank, email provider, Apple, etc. Yes, it's "easy" to fix any single one of these but hard to remember them all.
toast0 3y ago
If the alternatives are store forever, throw in the trash, or give to a carrier... Nobody is getting the data off at my house. I assume nobody will go through the dump looking for old phones, but someone did go through the dump and found the ET cartridges, so there's prescedent. Also, I feel a little bad about putting phones directly in the dump. If it goes to a carrier program, there's a good chance it goes into a repair process where the battery is replaced and maybe it works again. If it works again, I expect it to get the least intensive wipe required so that the user can get into the home screen, and then sold. That might mean the new user can get access to my data. Story time: my spouse had an Amazon Fire phone for quite some time; when she was done with it, my dad needed a phone, but FireOS was a really poor choice, so I flashed it with a 3rd party Android build. Several years later, he ran it all the way out of battery, and when he got it charged up, somehow it booted up into FireOS instead and had my spouse's accounts and what not. Whoops. No big deal, we got him a new phone and got the Fire Phone back (and I tried to wipe it again, but better) and now it lives in a drawer and won't power on.
- prepend 3y ago
  I agree with true scenario you describe. Story time: I was a contractor a few decades ago and I got a “new pc.” Theoretically it was imaged with a developer setup. Reality is the local user accounts were removed and a new account created for me. The previous user was an HR analyst who kept all their data in c:\employee_salary and didn’t get wiped. So it had layoff analysis of every employee, their salary, their layoff priority. Comically, sadly, the HR analyst was layed off despite being listed as high priority. I tried reporting the data and my contractor manager squashed it for fear that I would be rolled off the project. My lesson is that unless I destroy the data, assume others will see it.
- yonatan8070 3y ago
  Maybe it was using an A/B partition setup and somehow switched to the other non-flashed slot
  - toast0 3y ago
    Yeah, something like that seems probable. I don't really remember how I set it up, and I don't know what my Dad might have done in the boot menu.
prepend 3y ago
It’s a very low probability. I expect it to never happen, but it’s non-zero and easily mitigate-able for free by leaving it in a drawer. Although I suspect someone will think it a fun project to sift through old storage devices found in the dump to automatically scan for photos of interest. Given the high interest in pornography, I expect the motivation of “found nudes” will lead to some discoveries no one ever thought possible.

ballenf 3y ago

The bigger threat, imo, is a device that is still authenticated or trusted by some service I've forgotten about. A bank, email provider, Apple, etc. Yes, it's "easy" to fix any single one of these but hard to remember them all.

toast0 3y ago

If the alternatives are store forever, throw in the trash, or give to a carrier... Nobody is getting the data off at my house. I assume nobody will go through the dump looking for old phones, but someone did go through the dump and found the ET cartridges, so there's prescedent. Also, I feel a little bad about putting phones directly in the dump. If it goes to a carrier program, there's a good chance it goes into a repair process where the battery is replaced and maybe it works again. If it works again, I expect it to get the least intensive wipe required so that the user can get into the home screen, and then sold. That might mean the new user can get access to my data. Story time: my spouse had an Amazon Fire phone for quite some time; when she was done with it, my dad needed a phone, but FireOS was a really poor choice, so I flashed it with a 3rd party Android build. Several years later, he ran it all the way out of battery, and when he got it charged up, somehow it booted up into FireOS instead and had my spouse's accounts and what not. Whoops. No big deal, we got him a new phone and got the Fire Phone back (and I tried to wipe it again, but better) and now it lives in a drawer and won't power on.

prepend 3y ago
I agree with true scenario you describe. Story time: I was a contractor a few decades ago and I got a “new pc.” Theoretically it was imaged with a developer setup. Reality is the local user accounts were removed and a new account created for me. The previous user was an HR analyst who kept all their data in c:\employee_salary and didn’t get wiped. So it had layoff analysis of every employee, their salary, their layoff priority. Comically, sadly, the HR analyst was layed off despite being listed as high priority. I tried reporting the data and my contractor manager squashed it for fear that I would be rolled off the project. My lesson is that unless I destroy the data, assume others will see it.
yonatan8070 3y ago
Maybe it was using an A/B partition setup and somehow switched to the other non-flashed slot
- toast0 3y ago
  Yeah, something like that seems probable. I don't really remember how I set it up, and I don't know what my Dad might have done in the boot menu.

prepend 3y ago

It’s a very low probability. I expect it to never happen, but it’s non-zero and easily mitigate-able for free by leaving it in a drawer. Although I suspect someone will think it a fun project to sift through old storage devices found in the dump to automatically scan for photos of interest. Given the high interest in pornography, I expect the motivation of “found nudes” will lead to some discoveries no one ever thought possible.