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  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, with Feeling

    • 10 out of 10
    • Various Artists
    • Most musical episodes of TV shows frankly stink. They are usually little more than ill-conceived vehicles intended to let the stars show off what musical talent they have. Once More, With Feeling,

  • Pretty Hate Machine

    • 8 out of 10
    • Nine Inch Nails
    • For years I wanted to make music that sounded like something between Love and Rockets and Ministry. In 1989, Trent Reznor beat me to it with this genre-defining album, and it smacked me upside the hea
  • How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

    • 6 out of 10
    • U2
    • U2's latest entry is a mostly underwhelming collection of songs that does very little to sound any different from its equally pedestrian predecessor, 2000's "All That You Can't Leave Behind." While

  • Haunted

    • 10 out of 10
    • Poe
    • Dropping like a bomb on some of the blah musical offerings of her contemporaries, Haunted was one of the best albums of 2000, obliterating the competition.

      Ostensibly a tie-in to her brot

  • Never Let Me Down [ECD]

    • 4 out of 10
    • David Bowie
    • It must be a lonely place to be considered David Bowie's worst album by just about everyone, including the artist himself. As the last album before Bowie "rebooted" and formed the band Tin Machine, "N

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News

Refurbished iPhones May Still Contain Previous User Data

Apple iPhones sold as refurbished units may still contain lingering personal data from the previous customer, according to iPhone Atlas on Monday. Using a forensic toolkit, a detective was able to recover personal data that included e-mails, photos and even financial data. Techniques to perform low-level NAND permanent erase are scarce.

"As previously noted, performing a ’Restore’ operation on the iPhone does not delete personal data from the device. Such information remains intact on the device after a restore, making the process unsuitable as a preparatory measure for iPhone resale or service. Apparently, Apple’s refurbishing procedure also does not delete the personal data," the author said.

The situation was emphasized by Jonathan Zdziarski who has written a forensics manual for law enforcement officials. Currently, there is no widely available technique for erasing personal data on the iPhone. Mr. Zdziarski pointed out, "there are only a couple low-level methods to format the NAND and I’m not sharing at the moment."

While it’s unlikely that the purchaser of your refurbished iPhone would seek out or have ready access to forensic tools to do this kind of data recovery, it’s still good to know that personal data, despite your best efforts to erase it, could still be lingering in an iPhone that’s returned to Apple in a warranty swap or sold to someone else.

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