Hello, recently purchased an iphone but skipped the esim activation during setup. I took my phone to the carrier store and the carrier needed my iphone unlocked to get into my settings app to activate the esim. How worried should I be that he had to take my phone unlocked?
Do you know what exactly the store did on your iPhone? It’s most likely they only went to your settings to get it set up.
If you skip the esim process during setup, then you have to go into the settings app to activate the esim on iphone. I didn’t see what the carrier employee was doing which is making me feel paranoid.
Yeah I wouldn’t do that, you don’t need the carrier to do it you can just activate it yourself. It’s wild that it’s so normalized to hand your phone unlocked to a stranger.
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I had no idea I could do it myself though. Being unfamiliar with esim threw me off.
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If you’re too worried, reset your device and reset your eSIM yourself too. But get the instructions from your carrier first on how to reset or reinstall your eSIM.
Sad the US iPhone models are eSIM only.
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I’ve already done that. If you factory reset your iphone, it gives you an option to delete your esim. I’m just kind of worried about whether or not iphone factory reset leaves any residual data behind. I looked for information on reddit about whether iphone factory reset leaves data behind to recover but I got mixed answers.
No it’s a proper wipe, you don’t have to worry about anything.
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Just to be clear, I read on reddit that 3 letter agencies can recover data from a factory reset iphone. Is that true?
I wouldn’t take Reddit as a source. Did they link to something else?
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This.
If you want an actual source @Michael_S read this https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf.
Specifically on page 104:
When stored, the encrypted file system key is additionally
wrapped by an “effaceable key” stored in Effaceable Storage or using a media keywrapping key, protected by Secure Enclave anti-replay mechanism. This key doesn’t
provide additional confidentiality of data. Instead, it’s designed to be quickly erased on
demand (by the user with the “Erase All Content and Settings” option, or by a user or
administrator issuing a remote wipe command from a mobile device management (MDM)
solution, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, or iCloud). Erasing the key in this manner renders
all files cryptographically inaccessible.
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No they didn’t
You’re fine. You can reset and set up your phone as you want worry free.
is it just that the encryption keys are gone on iphone factory reset that makes data irrecoverable or is the data overwritten?
In an SSD you can’t actually guarantee data is erased so you keep it always encrypted and wipe the encryption key, that’s the proper way to do it so the data is unrecoverable.
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Wouldn’t it be possible to eventually break the encryption? That would render files accessible even if it’s at some point in the future no? Also I read iphones don’t use SSD’s, it uses flash storage.
Possible but improbable.
To my limited understanding, encryption is mostly a solved math problem these days, even taking account for the availability of quantum computation. You never really break the encryption, only how it is implemented.
Also does iphone factory reset overwrite the data or does it just delete it?
It deletes everything. There is no way to recover it once done.
Neither, it deletes the effaceable key making the data “cryptographically inaccessible”. I don’t think you need to worry about it.