Comments on: iPhone screengrab issues

By: Fixxxer

Fixxxer — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:33:16 +0000

I noticed this same behavior a back in July while trying to restore some deleted photos from my iPhone. I used ‘DD’ to make an image of the iPhone’s memory, then used PhotoRec to search for deleted images. In addition to finding the camera photos that I was looking for, I also recovered 77 of these screenshots–many of them containing personal info. For example, there were screenshots of emails that I had sent to several people, maps that I was looking at, web sites that I was viewing, etc. At the time, I didn’t know what the screenshots were for, but the problem still remains. It’s very easy to recover this data from an iPhone that hasn’t been “virginized”.

Here’s the post I made when I discovered it:
http://www.modmyi.com/forums/general-iphone-chat/240901-whats-all-these-screenshots.html

By: barry99705

barry99705 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:37:04 +0000

Yea, pretty much. I think the newest update has an option to
self wipe the device if the pass code is incorrectly entered too
many times. The best way to avoid any one from getting your info
is to not lose the phone in the first place. If you do, give at&t
a call as soon as you realize you don’t have it any more
so they can remote wipe if for you.

By: supernova_hq

supernova_hq — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:34:05 +0000

I don’t understand why people are so worried about this. Sure it takes a screenshot every time you hit the home button, but isn’t pretty much everything in that screenshot already stored elsewhere on the drive?

By: michael

michael — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:11:10 +0000

Hey, I think the bigger problem may be,
that there are personal informations on the
phone anyway – so losing the device is the real problem.
Perhaps Apple could include FileVault to unlock via lockcode^^

By: barry99705

barry99705 — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:38:08 +0000

Hey justin, that’s for taking screen shots you want to keep.
it makes a screen shot every time you hit the home button to make
those cool animations it does when it changes apps. They are
supposed to be deleted, but like every other type of storage media
only the pointers are deleted. so that makes them retrievable

By: justin

justin — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:28:41 +0000

actually it takes a screen shot when you press the lock button
and home at the same time. it dosnt do this everytime you hit
home. also when you connect it to a computer it makes the
drive appear but only for the pictures.

By: gm

gm — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:36:39 +0000

Actually, speaking of that, I wonder if, after jailbreaking said device, you can symlink the folder where these go to a created ramdisk?

By: gm

gm — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:27:43 +0000

“”there’s no way to prevent it,” zdziarski said during the webcast.”

Yes, there is – store the screenshot in RAM, not on the flash disk.