Bigger questions are raised closer to home: Are cell phone manufacturers enacting enough technical barriers to protect the data on handsets from snoops, whether that's law enforcement or anybody else?

A lot of work has gone into protecting transmissions, but it's wrongly assumed that if a person or agency has physical access to the phone, then they can be trusted. This simply isn't the case.

Modern smartphones contain extremely personal records of our lives. then phones may literally become our wallets when we use them to pay for purchases.

It's not just about handsets. Are app creators doing enough to protect confidential data they generate? For example, , but are they protecting the GPS data we willingly record?

I decided to do a few tests. I attached my iPhone to a fresh Windows install and, after installing iTunes and , a piece of software that makes accessible the iPhone's file system, I tried to see what I could find.