iPhone Insurance Swap? Fry your data first

Some of you will now the situation: you break your iPhone. Drop it while drunk. It's broken, permanently. It won't power on, not even a flash of life. You call your phone insurance company and they offer you a swap out. Next working day. Great!

But what should your next main concern be? Your data.

After the courier has delivered your shiny new iPhone and taken away your old one, where do you think your old phone is going? To phone heaven? To go in the bin? most likely it will end up being stripped down for parts. Unlikely that will be done by your phone insurance firm, but a third party that the insurance company will sell old phones to. Often a repair agent.

Now, we all know that curiosity is. Naturally, any firm that deals with customer data will have an enforced data protection policy, claiming that they don't look at your data, it's in safe hands etc etc. Let's face it, there is nothing to stop some early 20's techy who works for the repair agent / scrapping company to fix up your iPhone and have a peek at your photos, texts, contacts, emails, facebook, online banking...

So what can we do to prevent any would-be snooper from looking at our precious data after the phone has left our hands? See below.

The following guide is for an iPhone 3G and 3GS

You Will Need

The Guide

1) Ok first you need to use a size 0 Philips screwdriver and remove the two tiny screws that are in the base of the phone. There is one each side of the dock connector.

2) Next, attach the sucker that is supplied in the toolkit to the screen, like in the pic below, then pull up. This will detach the screen from the base.

3) Be careful not to pull the screen too much. It is attached to the motherboard by several delicate connectors. The motherboard is still mounted in the base of course. Most of the connectors are labelled with small orange numbers, as seen below. With a small impliment (provided in the toolkit) you can prise these connectors upwards, away from the motherboard, thus disconnecting them.

4) Disconnecting all the connectors will allow the screen section and the base to be full seperated, as below. We are interested in the base from now on, as we need to damage the NAND chips on the motherboard.

5) The blue PCB is the motherboard. The silver sections are metal covers which protect the NAND flash memory. There are several small Philips screws around the edge of the board. Remove all of them.

6) Here is a close up of one of the screws in the corner of the phone.Remove these also.

7) After removing all these screws, the mainboard will become loose. Using a prising tool, you can easily lift the mainboard out fully. This is recommended, as the next steps are not advisable to perform near the battery.

8) With the mainboard out, the next step is to remove the silver covers which guard the flash memory, which still houses your precious data. A prising tool will take care of this nicely. Be careful not to bend the soft aluminum covers, as we need to put this all back together!

9) Having removed the covers, this will reveal a number of black NAND flash chips. One of these holds your data! You can identify it by looking closely at the largest chips. You are looking for one which has Toshiba written on it, or an M in a circle logo. Get your soldering iron warmed up and sit the hot end directly onto this chip!

10) Feel free to mix it up a bit, focusing heat on the edges of the chip which helps melt the sealant which is ensuring a good connection between the chip onto the board. Apply as much heat as you can, for at least 15mins, this will damage the flash memory beyond usability.However try not to perform any visible damage to the PCB or other components.

11) OK! the damage is done.

Now the hard part - put it all back together the same order you took it apart. Ensure all the screws go back in and tightly. You don't want anyone to know you have taken it apart.