With millions of iPhone users hitting the streets and hotspots in the next few months, there’s a high degree of concern over whether they will be able to keep their data from the hands of the many crackers and sniffers out there who routinely grab any login information or other personal data that passes over these networks. Just how protected is your data when you use the iPhone's wireless features? Glenn Fleishman has the answer in an online exclusive feature story from Macworld.com.
The short version: e-mail on the iPhone is, by default, pretty secure. And as a smart Macworld reader pointed out in the story’s attached comments, you can use Gmail securely over the web by pointing your browser at https://mail.google.com. But everything else on the iPhone is basically sent in the clear, and the iPhone’s VPN client is — as we’ve established — not really workable quite yet.
As always, for the long version, read the whole story.
I know it says that email is essentially very secure, but could that be fixed with a future firmware crack? I would love up-to-date Hotmail email on my iPhone.