What the article doesn't mention is that, if you back up all of your data to your desktop, you can retrieve it by restoring the phone. You will still lose the corporate data, but you will get back your apps and personal data.<p>If you are using Exchange at work, I would definitely recommend keeping your personal data (email, contacts, calendar) in a separate account, which the iPhone will seamlessly combine for you.
I don't get it.<p>Where I've worked, if an IT guy started accidentally nuking people's Blackberrys that IT guy wouldn't just be fired, he would be destroyed.<p>On the other hand, if your device is <i>actually</i> lost then you would want the entire device to be nuked.<p>I suppose it boils down to how much the employer is willing to invest in its employees. If the employer is not willing to pay for the devices the employee uses for work, then the employer is probably not going to manage those devices responsibly. For that reason, I would never connect my personal device to work unless my employer was willing to pay for it.<p>If your employer acts like they're doing <i>you</i> a favor by allowing <i>your</i> device on their network, then that's probably a good indication that you shouldn't do it.
Do any enterprise solutions allow more granular wiping?<p>I'd be completely fine with my workplace being able to nuke their own information, so long as they couldn't touch my personal data.<p>Well, I wouldn't be <i>perfectly fine</i> with it, but it seems like a reasonable minimum level of separation.
I remember a similar story from a couple of months ago, and for that reason haven't connected my work email on my phone. I'll only consider doing it if the company starts paying for the phone and the plan. Until then, it's not worth the risk for me.
Its nice to see this issue get some additional coverage.<p>I've been going back and forth about having my phone linked to Google this way. I don't like the concept of handing them an invitation to remote wipe my phone. On the other hand, there does not seem to be a better way to do over the air contact syncing etc (without signing up for MobileMe). My current position is to also sync to my desktop as a "if Google dies somehow" data store and think of my phone as somewhat more disposable repository.
How many people are using Exchange to sync their Google accounts to their iPhone/iPad? How many of them realize that is an invitation for Google to wipe your device?
"somehow work could get through AT&T, who I thought controlled my phone"<p>And that <i>is</i> the problem. Your phone is controlled by someone else. It's not really <i>your</i> phone.
I believe that is also possible with Android phones when you use the default Exchange connectivity app. I've ended up using a different program to connect to Exchange.
I'm not sure what is worse:<p>- the fact that this is technically possible,<p>- the fact that the software and service providers think it is appropriate to offer the feature,<p>- the fact that some employers (such as the one in the article) actually think it is even slightly reasonable behaviour to use the feature on someone's personal phone,<p>- the fact that the wiping behaviour isn't already clearly illegal with horrific penalties, or<p>- the idea that the kind of employee waiver mentioned in the article might actually be considered a fair and enforceable part of any employment contract.<p>This is just so completely wrong, it's hard to know where to start!
My employer solved the issue of people not knowing about this very easily. Before you can connect to exchange with a personal device, you had to sign a document saying that that they could remote wipe your device if it gets lost <i>as well as</i> when you terminate employment.
The whole article is based on this:<p><i>Stanton wouldn't have been surprised to see this kind of remote control on a company phone.<p>But this iPhone was hers.<p>"It was my account, in my name [and] I'd paid all the bills," Stanton says. "It didn't make any sense to me that somehow work could get through AT&T, who I thought controlled my phone, and could completely disable the phone and the account."</i><p>The whole news item is "person doesn't understand how a system they use works, as a result gets confused shocked and indignant".<p>There's no <i>news</i> here. Exchange ActiveSync has been working that way for, what, 4-7 years or so.<p>If you haven't learned what something can do, then you have every right to be confused, but pretty much no right to be annoyed.<p>This kind of nuanced technology with personal phone and phonebill connected over a third party network to a company email and calendar does not have "a nontechnical explanation" for how it works. There is no nontechnical explanation for what kind of security problems you might end up with if someone steals a mobile phone with a live email account - from revealed information in emails and calendars and address books and live address book searches, to social engineering to forged messages. The phone might have a VPN connection.<p>Someone else got trampled by the march of technologic complexity, that's perhaps the news.