iPhone’s privacy flaw: It takes automatic screenshots of all your latest actions

According to renowned iPhone hacker and and data-forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski, the iPhone takes a screenshot of all you recent actions – sending email, browsing a web page or even an SMS.

That’s a serious security flaw, but for a very innocuous reason. It is done to create the shrinking and disappearing effect of the window of application every time the “Home” button is pressed.

This in effect though caches all the latest actions performed on the iPhone. This latest image is deleted, but as with any other digital devices, this is retrievable. So while this might be good for tracking a terrorist through his lost/abandoned iPhone, this sure spells trouble if you sent a private message to your girlfriend and then lost the iPhone!

When an iPhone user taps the Home button, the window of the application you have open shrinks and disappears. In order to create that shrinking effect, the iPhone snaps a screenshot

We leave you with Jonathan Zdziarski, from his Thursday webcast:

There’s no way to prevent it…I’m kind of divided on it. I hope Apple fixes it because it’s a significant privacy leak, but at the same time it’s been useful for investigating criminals.

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