I Won't Buy An I-Phone....

as if merchant data bases were the only risk to privacy posed by having a phone in your pocket?

 

I have iDevices and I like them very much. I don't really think they are superior, or the best out there however, I'm no apple shill. I find some of the android based tablets very nice, as well as some of the Microsoft devices. that said, I like my iDevices

 

i likewise have no fan affiliation for any corporate product line. i simply don't use a phone that much at all. (though i won't take back how i feel about apple's particular sort of corporate arrogance)

 

I'm not just talking about merchant databases

 

That is true, the ICloud does use PKI with AES 128, for short messages, which is a much better option than those options mentioned. Bruteforce is impractical, assuming that Apple devices generate entropy properly. It's secure against average eavesdropping.

They should be using forward secrecy, which means each message is also encrypted with a temporary key, so that if an attacker were able to gain access to your private keys, such as in the case of Heartbleed, your session data would still be secure.
A much better option is TextSecure, which is comming to the IPhone very soon. Beta's already out on github.

 

So I'm back up and running with an I-4. Is it okay if it was given to me and not bought?