If you’re like me, you carry your cell phone everywhere. And, you may not give much thought to the information on it: phone numbers you’ve saved, photographs you’ve taken, records of calls made and received, along with text messages. Not to mention e-mails and browsing records for cell phones that connect to the Internet.
If someone managed to retrieve this information, would that person find anything embarrassing? Or potentially incriminating?
Hopefully not. Because thanks to a new device called a Cellular Seizure Investigation Stick (CSI Stick), anyone can grab the data from your cell phone very quickly. By plugging the CSI Stick into the data port of your cell phone, anyone can almost instantly download all e-mails, instant messages, dialed numbers, phone books and everything else stored in its memory. The CSI Stick can even recover deleted data, if the space the data occupied hasn’t been overwritten.
The CSI Stick (manufactured by Paraben, specialists in electronic forensic hardware, software, and training) is also cheap, as surveillance devices go. It only costs US$200, plus $99 for the most basic version of the software used to analyze the data. The device can capture data from many Motorola and Samsung cell phone models, and Paraben promises more manufacturer support coming soon.
If you’re looking to dig up dirt on your girlfriend, boyfriend, ex-spouse, boss, co-worker, etc., the CSI Stick just might be a great way to start. But more likely, you simply want to protect your cell phone data from this type of analysis.
The first step is to keep only as much data on your cell phone as you really need. Delete calling records, e-mails, text messages, and photographs daily. Copy any photos you’ve taken onto your PC and then delete them. If your cell phone has a SIM card (most U.S. phones don’t) ask your cellular provider for a new one, and destroy the old one (e.g., by smashing it with a hammer and then incinerating it).
Unfortunately, simply deleting the data isn’t enough to protect you if someone conducts a “data dump” of your cell phone. Just like on a personal computer, deleted data can be recovered until it’s overwritten. But unlike PCs, the tools necessary to securely delete information on your cell phone aren’t readily available. In most cases, you’ll need to reformat the phone to make the data unrecoverable. Before you proceed, make sure that your cell phone carrier will activate your reformatted phone.
Here are a few resources to check out:
Your cell phone manufacturer. Look in your cell phone manual index for entries like “delete data” or “reformat device.” If you’ve lost or discarded the manual, you can probably download a replacement copy at your cell phone company’s Web site. While you’re on the Web site, look for reformatting instructions based on the phone and carrier.
Cell Phone Data Eraser. If you go to http://www.recellular.com/recycling/data_eraser/default.asp, you’ll find deletion instructions for hundreds of cell phones. Unfortunately, not all cell phones are supported and in many cases you only receive instructions on how to delete the data, not reformat the device. But it’s worth checking out.
With cell phones becoming ever more sophisticated, it’s only logical that the possibilities for data loss are becoming larger as well. Protect yourself before someone plugs the CSI Stick, or a similar device, into your cell phone!
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Nestmann
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