Privacy leaks from auctioned Smartphones
Published:
Our smartphones have a lot of details about our lives, including where we go to, who we communicate to, etc. There are auction websites where users can bid for Smartphones. Do those Smartphones still have the data from their previous owner? Read more
In this study with Richard Roberts, Raley Roberts, and Dave Levin we bought smartphones sold in a police auction website and tried to obtain data from them with no forensic tools.
We found that many smartphones still had data from their previous owner and that data was accessible by turning the Smartphone on, using the information on sticky notes some Smartphones had, or guessing common PINs and patterns. This is a case of privacy leaks and re-victimization as some of these smartphones were used by people to commit crimes such as identity theft (i.e., they had personal information from victims of identity theft).
Do you want to learn more on what we found and our ethical considerations?
I invite you to read our paper.