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General discussion

How to permanantly remove emails from iPhone

Jan 17, 2014 10:05AM PST

Hi guys, so here is the situation...

I've just had an employee leave the company on fairly bad terms. To cut a long story short they were caught stealing money so we had to let them go.

Now, the problem I have is I know that they have quite sensitive, confidential company information on their work email account which they have synced to their iPhone. Is there a way of me de-activating their email account (which I can access), resulting in all of the emails to also be removed from their phone? I'm just not sure whether deleting emails emails from the account on a computer would also remove them from their phone.

The email account is with gmail.

Would be great if anyone has any suggestions!

Thanks

Discussion is locked

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You'll need the phone and destroy it.
Jan 17, 2014 1:42PM PST

One of the truly odd things about the iPhone is that Apple never exposed the files or file system. This is a long discussion to catch folk new to this up to speed but we can't be sure the content is gone unless we put the phone through a shredder.
Bob

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Sensitive, confidential company information on Gmail!!
Jan 17, 2014 10:42PM PST

As soon as you mentioned Gmail your emails were no longer confidential.

Allowing employees to access email on their personal phones is never a good idea, you have no legal control over the device, and you cannot use the inbuilt ability to lock and delete the contents of the iPhone.

If the Gmail account was accessed using MAPI as the protocol, then removing the emails from the account "might" remove them from the iPhone, depending on how they organized the mail, but if it was a POP account then nothing you do can remove them.

That only leaves Bob's suggestion.

P

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I hear a crunching sound.
Jan 18, 2014 1:38AM PST

There is Gmail and there is a Gmail business email service (about 5 bucks a month per employee.)

One's a mess for companies, the second not so much as you can disable their account but then again, I fear this is exactly what should happen to companies that "embrace BYOD."

If you allow BYOD, you know this is not free. You lose control you had if you supplied the devices.
Bob