Security for Lost iPhone

[jeff.poste]

I just bought Tap Forms after looking at many different, but similar applications. My compliments on a very creative, well designed, and artfully implemented application.

I would like to store password and other confidential / sensitive information in Tap Forms, but the one thing that is making me hold off on that is that if perchance I lost my phone, there is no way to make sure that the data is does not fall into the wrong hands.

I would ideally like to see 2 data security features added to Tap Forms which, I think, would make it virtually perfect.

1. An access pass code that is an alphanumeric password (much like the encryption key)instead of a 4 number PIN code – for obvious security reasons.

2. An extra option on your lockout time list such that if you entered the password wrong more than ‘X’ times, the program would self destruct / erase / shred all data without any notice – until after it was done. I would personally set it to erase on the second bad try. If you erased it yourself by mistake, you could always recover using a restore from your PC or MAC.

An extra security option for (2) would be to set the phone to erase your data if you did not successfully sign onto Tap Forms at least once every ‘X’ days. Any successful sign on would reset the counter. Of course, you would want to alert the user with a warning of some sort (email, window on the screen, etc) if they were getting close to the security time window. With this option, you could be sure that your security would hold off a thief at least until the phone automatically erased all of your sensitive data within ‘X’ days. I haven’t seen any other applications with a security option like this. I believe that it would give you some serious competitive advantage in the marketplace.

These additional features would virtually eliminate the risk of a thief getting any of your sensitive information, especially if you had a good password and a low ‘try’ threshold.

Any chance of seeing something to increase data security in the event of a lost iPhone in the near future?

Jeff

[Brendan]

Hello Jeff,

Have you ever thought about enabling the self destruct feature on the iPhone itself? If you enter the code in wrong 10 times it will erase your phone.

There’s also MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature. One of my friends lost his iPhone in a cab a week ago or so. He tracked it down using MobileMe and phoned the cab driver. The cab driver denied having the phone despite my friend being able to track it. Once he realized there was no way he was going to get his phone back, he issued the self destruct command which then reset the phone back to factory defaults.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Author]

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