Setting your four-digit passcode is great if you want to keep your data safe, keep your girlfriend from finding your porn stash, or generally inconvenience yourself by taking an extra few seconds to unlock your phone. But if you thought it would keep police from finding incriminating evidence, think again.
Forbes links to a video that was posted by Micro Systemation, a Sweden firm that sells tools and software to military and law enforcement groups. One of their applications, XRY, is able to quickly discover iOS and Android passcodes, transfer all the data to a computer, decrypt it, and display all sorts of information, like GPS, call logs, contacts, and even keystrokes.
We here at Macgasm would like to remind you of the three simple rules of protecting your data:
- Don’t do illegal things, dummy.
- If you’re going to do illegal things, don’t store incriminating evidence on your phone (or any electronic device), stupid.
- If you’re going to store incriminating evidence on your phone (or any electronic device), make strong passwords whenever possible, moron. Get applications like 1Password to help you create and store these.
Click through to check out the video. It’s long, but it’s pretty slick how they managed to get it to work.