Secure Your iPhone with These Useful Applications

Recent data shows that the iPhone has some security vulnerabilities in the Mail and Safari applications that could compromise your data and your iPhone. With the ubiquitous iPhone application furor riding high in the news and the public consciousness you have to believe that the bad guys are thinking of ways to snag your data without you being any the wiser.

Mecrets

NormSoft has released an application called Mecrets which they say will help you store you information more securely on your iPhone and iPod touch. It allows you to store confidential information such as passwords, account numbers and personal identification details without a worry.

The touch lock interface allows you to padlock that information in the old school way by giving you a locker combination that is required to access the information. If you're not into the dialing up your locker combo interface you can also create a password.

In the good old days those bad guys would just take a screwdriver and pop open your combination lock. But the new digital version is 256-bit AES encrypted so that old trick won't work so well.

The software also remembers URLs, stores personal notes, generates random passwords for new accounts, and organizes items in logical groups. It's available now from the App Store or at their website (http://www.mecrets.com).

SplashID

Another secure data storage application on offer for the iPhone is SplashID, which is a ported Palm OS app. It allows you to design and create any number of different types of records and lets you secure them with a 256-bit Blowfish encrypted password.

The application offers a vast amount of flexibility thanks to its numerous configuration options and can store information such as usernames and passwords, banking information and software licenses and registrations.

It even offers one-tap dialing from the secured information area. You can also Sync your info with the desktop version available for MacOS. Available now through the app store for $9.95 or check out their website for more information (http://www.splashdata.com/splashid/download/iphone.htm).

YouGetitBack

As flaws are found and the market expands more and more applications will be developed, ported or modified to include more secure ways to store data. Of course if that iPhone is lost or stolen the chances of recovering the data are slim to none until Mobile Superhero from YouGetitBack.com (http://www.yougetitback.com) gets ported to the iPhone, which they say is in progress now.

This application/service tags your phone so that if you report it lost you have a chance of getting it back. Sure the application depends on the honesty of those around us, but research shows 65 to 75 percent of people will attempt to return a security-tagged item to the rightful owner.

At this point in the game, that's all the guarantee you're probably ever going to get.