The owner of this bedazzled iPhone is Stockton, CA, resident Maria Avila. When she got her handset back from an iOS 4 upgrade at her local Apple Store, she found it chock full of a complete stranger’s personal data. Curious!
Setting aside the oddness of going to the Genius Bar for a firmware update, it’s hard to think of what might have caused the mix-up. The woman whose information Avila suddenly had access to, Marlene Hepner, had been a customer at the same Apple Store previously but hadn’t noticed any difficulty with her iPhone. And the data Avila had access to – texts, address book information, photos – could easily have been exploited in a less trustworthy person’s hands.
Troubling too is the help Avila says she initially from Apple was just to “get a new phone”. Apparently though, the company’s now working on correcting the issue. And as soon as they do, hopefully they can tell me where one finds an iPhone case like that. [CBS13 via CNET]
Johnd
Friday, July 2, 2010 at 10:06 AMYou don’t actually think that people who work at the Genius Bars are actually geniuses, do you?
Restoring the incorrect backup to her phone gives her someone elses stuff. No big mystery there.