SecureWipe

Have you ever wondered what happens to your private data after you delete an app?

Can a foreign person retrieve private data like passwords, credit card numbers and other stuff from iPhone's/iPad's/iPod’s flash memory?

Do you want to sell your iPhone and don't want your private data to fall in the wrong hands?

SecureWipe protects your privacy by filling the complete free space of your iPhone/iPad/iPod with random data making it impossible to recover anything useful.

Secure wipe allows you to do a partial wipe of your private data without reinstalling your iPhone. E.g. if you entered your credit card number in an app which you don't want anymore just remove the app and run SecureWipe. No other data on the device is harmed except the things you deleted.

If you are paranoid you can run up to 10 wipe cycles to be sure that there is really nothing left on the device!

iPhone OS 2.0 allows you already to clean the complete iPhone – Secure Wipe enhances this by a deeper cleaning with multiple overwrite cycles and the ability to wipe data without deleting the complete iPhone's content.

Since the delete process takes some time it is possible to interrupt the app e.g. for a phone call and continue wiping the disk later.

SecureWipe runs on all iPhone devices starting with iPhone OS 3.0 - so you can even wipe your very old device before selling it.

FAQ
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How does flash memory work and what is wear leveling?

Each flash memory block has a limited count of writing cycles (several 1000 times). To make flash last longer the system uses a technique called "wear leveling" which does the following: If a file is deleted e.g. by removing an app the file is not overwritten in flash memory but only marked for deletion. So the content may still be recovered with low level access to the device. The system keeps a list when a block was used last. If a new file is written the least recently used block of flash is cleand and written with new data. This avoids stressing a single block until it's unwritable but has the disadvantage that deleted content stays as long on the device as possible.


What does SecureWipe do to work around wear leveling?

SecureWipe simply fills ALL blocks with random data. The system tries to fill blocks which were least recently used first. Coming to the end of the fill process the system must overwrite the blocks with your private data. This is why it's very important to complete the process and ignore all low memory warning of the device. The newest deleted files are overwritten at the end of the wipe!


The system gives me a low memory warning!

Thats ok! This is because it must fill all the remaining space on the device. Just continue and let SecureWipe complete its job!


Can't secure wipe not just delete the files or overwrite them?

No. The app has to access to the file system of the iPhone and it can't just delete single files. The only way to perform the wipe is to remove the apps by hand or syncing and then start SecureWipe.


How often should I overwrite the memory?

Overwriting once is perfect.


I ran SecureWipe and just pressed the home button. Now I have no space left on my iPhone!

This is not a bug - its a feature! If you exit the app e.g. because a phone call is coming or remembered that you wanted another app to be wiped - SecureWipe interrupts the process but keeps the space it already wiped locked. After you go back to SecureWipe it resumes from the last position completing the job. If you want to abort the wipe and don't want to resume later press the "abort" button and then exit. Pressing abort frees all space consumed by the app.

I can't answer or comment on questions in the reviews. If you got any questions please write a mail to support@code-and-web.de