iPhone Passcode Not as Secure as Once Thought!
I found out read today that there is a work around for the iPhone’s Passcode, making the iPhone not as secure as I once thought it was! It seems that when your iPhone is locked and you are prompted to enter your Passcode, you can select Emergency Call and then double tap your Home Button and it will launch your double tap settings. Meaning, if you have your Favorites set as your Home Button double tap (your iPhone’s Home Button double tap is set automatically to your Favorites so, if you have never changed it in your Settings, that it what it is set as), people are able to get into your Favorites even if your iPhone is locked. At first this may not seems like an issue. So, they might call a few of the people on your Favorites list. Well, it also means that if you have an address, email address, Safari link, etc in any of the info for your contacts they can get into all of that as well. If you have an email address set for one of your favorites, it can be clicked on which then opens a blank email if they were then to select Cancel it would bring them into your email’s inbox giving the person full access to all of the your emails, contacts and info. So, when at first it doesn’t seem like an issue that someone would be able to get into your Favorites, it leaves room for them to get a lot of personal information.
It seems that the only way to prevent this from happening is going into your Setting on your iPhone and then General and changing your Home Button to Home or iPod. If you set your Home Button as iPod, it will launch your iPod from your Lock Screen. A person couldn’t do a ton of damage from your iPod but, they would technically be “in” your iPhone. However, if you set your iPhone’s double tap to Home…it will not allow the person to get into your iPhone from the lock screen. Even if they were to select Emergency Call and then double tap, it will just bring them back to the Passcode screen. So for now, until this glitch is worked out (which I assume it is a glitch with firmware 2.0.2), the only way to keep people out of your iPhone is to set your Home Button double tap to Home.
via http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/2008/08/27/iphone-passcode-not-as-secure-as-we-though/