[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Actually, it’s not. I corrected you in another thread where you brought this up."

Actually, it is, or at least that's my current read on it. Because, if my research is correct (and sorry, I don't have a 3GS to test it on) sensitive data in the phone is not being exposed and never has.

Bear with me: The lack of /usr, /var, and similar subdirectories is the key. I believe what Ubuntu is seeing is the publicly shared directory, /var/mobile/Media, which contains the photos and such (including the familiar DCIM folder which has always mounted over USB with the phone off). This build of Ubuntu is mounting the full subdirectory tree from that public folder, but the files that would be of privacy concern are not exposed, nor is any of this available wirelessly.

So, I was wrong about the issue being fixed in iOS 4, because it does seem to be a non-issue, inflated by inaccurate reporting. The iOS 4 fix I identified in the other thread does seem to be for something else.

[dayglored]

> I believe what Ubuntu is seeing is the publicly shared directory, /var/mobile/Media, which contains the photos and such (including the familiar DCIM folder which has always mounted over USB with the phone off).

Out of curiosity, I just now mounted my 8GB iPod Touch (3.1.3 software) on my Linux Fedora Core 10 system via USB. Hadn't ever tried that before.

Fedora immediately recognizes it as an Apple iPod, and does exactly what RightOnTheLeftCoast says -- it mounts the public media tree. I can see my pictures, etc. Nothing else. I cannot see any private media (e.g. MP3s), private apps, nor any of my private information in the iPod configuration.

So maybe this is nothing new?

The above just for comparison with an older product. I know that the iPod Touch is not an iPhone, and I'm running 3.x not 4.x software...