Android Now Recommended Over iPhone If You Value Security and Privacy
For the past several years, enthusiasts and Apple have preached the Fort Knox security of iPhones. Even the American government requires help from Apple just to access the private information of an iPhone user. However, that changes today. According to Vice, it can easily crack encrypted iPhones up to the iPhone X. US law enforcement agencies would hire companies, Cellebrite, in this case, to crack smartphones. Being one of the easiest devices to obtain information, data such as messages, call logs, contacts, GPS records and even from 3rd party apps like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram among others can be retrieved.
A year ago we couldn’t get into iPhones, but we could get into all the Androids. Now we can’t get into a lot of the Androids.” said Detective Rex Kiser, Fort Worth Police Department Digital Forensic. The cracking tool used by Cellebrite works flawlessly with most iPhone devices, however, Android phones like the Huawei P20 Pro doesn’t seem to be affected by it. While it did work with Google Pixel 2 and Samsung Galaxy S9, they shared that they can’t obtain data such as social media or GPS records.
“Some of the newer operating systems are harder to get data from than others. I think a lot of these [phone] companies are just trying to make it harder for law enforcement to get data from these phones … under the guise of consumer privacy.”
That doesn’t mean newer phones like iPhone 11 or Galaxy Note 10+ can’t be cracked already. Vice shared that it’s still possible to hack into these devices. It will only take more time and resources. The route is steeper but eventually, it will get there.
