How long does Remote Wipe take to complete?

A security feature like this should be password protected. If you're into stealing info from an iPhone remember to turn of the remote wipe feature pronto. I like the make noise feature though helps find it in the sofa cushions.

It took me less than 10 minutes this morning to "restore". It did a complete wipe. I sold the phone later today and the guy who came over, had his on sim card. We popped it in, and the phone recognized his number as the "home" phone.

Now I have to wait about a week for my new 3G S to arrive.

I called up Apple support and spoke to a good bloke called Bryce. He instructed me on what to do but it didn't work so he diagnosed the problem as a hardware issue, possible fireware issue maybe.

I posted a thread in the forum on http://nziphone.com and one of the guys said that I was doing it wrong.

Instead of pressing the power button then the Home button and then plugging in the USB lead all I needed was to press the Home button (phone was already off) and then connect the USB lead with iTunes up and running first.

My phone is now going through the restore mode.

First thanks to Apple for having such a great support team and thanks to DBMandrake for helping me out.

@lowededwookie, thanks for the leg work and the great tip. I let my curiosity get the best of me and did a remote wipe just because I could. I thought for sure I bricked it but now, thanks to you, I am back in business.

jynxthecat wrote:
A quick format would serve no purpose from a security standpoint.

Actually, yes it would. A quick format could make the iPhone useless to the average thief, especially if a formatted iPhone could only be restored at an Apple store (I'm sure they could figure out how to do this). A formatted iPhone might be more likely to be turned in or thrown away, which obviously increases the security of your data tenfold (your data is more secure if no one is trying to access or even knows it's there). If it could somehow follow up with a low-level format, that would of course be great. If someone was really interested in your data, they would need only to crack the case open and disconnect the power before the low-level format really got going, so it would be easy to circumvent. The remote wipe is going to be almost entirely ineffective against someone who really knows what they're doing (if fact, they'll have all your data before you even realize the phone is gone and can get to a computer to wipe it). Since it's intended to protect your data in the case of your run-of-the-mill thief getting hold of it, a quick format would be as effective as a low-level wipe.

Again, I'm assuming that the phone was stolen by the 9-in-10 common thief who is just interested in quick turn around for monetary gain, not some hacker who somehow decided to follow you around for the day you left your iPhone sitting out :P

PS Let's not even talk about just popping the SIM card out...

Ug, I should probably clarify. "Security" is relative. Various levels of wiping provide various levels of security, all based on who has your iPhone. I guess it just depends on what you want to protect against. (e.g. I work at a school, so a quick wipe is going to be more effective for me since a student would be more inclined to just sneak the phone back onto my desk if it wouldn't even load up an OS.)

Remote wipe has zero security value if 4 touches turns the whole thing off. Best not to put stuff that needs a any security on a gizmo you will be carrying around 24/7. So if my phone vanishes i'd GPS the bugger, if it's someplace it shouldn't be, start the wipe. If they aren't bright enough to turn off wipe options, pretty unlikely they will be able to crack it and dissect a low level format.

Now a secure (always on) wipe feature that bricks the device would be valuable as a deterrent, why steal iPhones if they always quit working.

MikeRCol wrote:
Now a secure (always on) wipe feature that bricks the device would be valuable as a deterrent, why steal iPhones if they always quit working.

Agreed. I'm not sure why the remote wipe doesn't somehow make the entire device useless without bringing it to an Apple store for reactivation (where they could run the SN against a list of deices reported stolen and require identification to receive it back).

Personally, I have the iPhone set to wipe itself if the passkey fails 10x.

I disagree.

Mix a passcode with the remote feature and you'd have a pretty secure unit, one that is far more secure than your standard phone anyway.

While they're busy trying to get passed the passcode then it's highly probable that you'd have got to a computer to remote wipe it first meaning problem solved.

With the data gone then there's no real problem because in this case of this original posting they can't even get it to power up let alone show up on the computer in iTunes.

The only way this can be unsecure is if they stole your laptop as well and did the restore from iTunes.

Actually, you don't need to have a MobileMe account. If your company uses Exchange 2007 and sets up Exchange ActiveSync, you can remote wipe it using Outlook Web's interface. I remote wiped my old iPhone 8GB (pre-3G) to see if it really works. Judging from the Apple logo that's been displayed for a few hours now, I'd imagine it does. 🙂 This is going to make me very happy at work, as we have Exchange 2007 and a bunch of users with shiny new iPhones. I think my company's management is going to be quite happy that we can remote wipe the phones if they get lost or stolen.

Thank you Apple and Microsoft for working together on this and not letting normal competition get in the way of great interoperability!

It's funny, but the iPhone integrates with Exchange better than most other smart phones. Calendar works great (now able to send meeting invites since iPhone 3.0 was released). Contacts search the global directory, which rocks. Email works wonderfully with Exchange. Etc. Etc.

Sorry for gushing, but I'm very pleased with Apple's progress with the iPhone since it was released. I never expected that it would work so well in a corporate setting. Now, they just need to focus on security issues such as full-device encryption and such. But, I guess that'll be a 4.0 wishlist request! 🙂

I agree a pass code would help. My original suggestion was a pass code on email find option. You would need to follow that level of security through and protect the me.com account from deletion or any other changes that would make the find option fail to function. Probably quite a few ways to break that link.

One thing I'm not willing to do is enter a pass code every time I want to access my phone. Until there are significant changes I'll keep the sensitive stuff someplace else. If you are looking at this as enterprise level security feature there is a long way to go before it would even come close.

you can set the passcode for the phone so it only turns on after 1min, 5min, 15min, 1hour or 4hours after standby-ing it. This way, you don't have to enter it in everytime. I agree it needs another option, but in the meantime I feel more secure...