Anyone know how to completely wipe an iPhone where nothing can be recovered?

[alanp]

I'm doing a warrantee exchange through Apple; and on this old phone I'm sending to them I've had some interesting stuff stored on it at one time or another.

I was just thinking In my contacts I have a few numbers and email addresses of a couple celebs (not scifi just a couple of people in the sports and music world) and I would feel awful if I ever let them get out.  Also there might have been a few pictures sent to me by a girl friend that if they ever found there way onto the Internet, I would never be heard from again. 

I plugged it into my computer and restored it to factory settings and I'm thinking I should do that a few more times. Not that I'm expecting Apple to set up a special data recovery lab to recover things off my old phone, I'd just like to be pretty sure it's gone before they get it.

Am I being way too careful?  Any thoughts?

[X]

You did it right.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4704217_erase-personal-data-off-iphone.html

I think it could still be recovered with forensic tech, but why would they? It's not a standard way the work.

[Ktrek]

I think this method has been proven to be unrecoverable! :)

Will It Blend? - iPhone 4

Kevin

[Feathers]

I've never seen anything quite like that! I fear for my phone...

As for erasure, the 'delete all data' option (or whatever it is) should be fair enough. If it actually overwrites everything then doing it 3 or 4 times will be even better and if you're really paranoid then leaving it blank but powered for a few days also assists in the avoidance of potential recovery of data.

I really doubt anyone's going to try though and if they did there's nothing you can do to guarantee full erasure.

[alanp]

I guess I could fill every byte with old podcasts and restore to factory 7 times.  That should burry all my old data.

[billybob476]

The IT guy at one of my old jobs used to nuke dead hard drives in the microwave for 5 seconds.