"In the UK it's also standard practice to scoop up mobiles belonging to the recently deceased, to see what they were doing prior to being dead."

this is just to check no one was trying to kill, or self harm etc.

No, you've got it right, that is how (one of the techniques used by) wear leveling works.

But I don't see how that disagrees with the text you quoted, so maybe I'm misreading something (or I've gotten confused myself - not an entirely unusual event).

Build your own digital alibi.....

Living I would assume! If the police need to check someones mobile to find this out, we really are at the bottom of the slippery slope....and digging

If he was "signing on" he wasn't illiterate at all!

Give the phone to DHL with specific routing instructions. Then let "them" pick the bones out of that!

Your remark : "Today's criminals aren't generally that stupid" reminds me of the computers recovered by the Colombian goverment in a attack to the FARC terrorists....

Those computers shown a web of links between the venezuelan and ecuadorian goverment and the FARC guerrillas....

Today´s criminals ARE that stupid!!!

I don't want a mobe...

...post mortem. If I die suddenly, and, lets face it, shit does happen, I would not really fancy the police poking through my electronic equipment. I wonder if you can be prosecuted posthumously under the new Criminal Justice Bill...

Whatever, I wouldn't fancy my grieving relatives (I hope they would be grieving anyway...) being old by the police 'Oh by the way your son/brother/husband/nephew/uncle is a massive pevert' (according the the government).

Apart from that aspect, I have various bank details and accounts stored on my laptop. Lets think how that would go:

I die.

Police take laptop to check wasn't topped by irate forum moderator.

Police forensically delve into files, unencrypt bank details.

Police lose laptop.

Criminal finds laptop, rinses my accounts...

I used to have a Philips Savvy. Bloody awful lump of a thing.

Couldn't even add your own ring tones...

So for the paranoid , what is needed is either a high temperature furnace temperature > 1500 degrees Celsius kiln to completely destroy the phone , a microwave oven to nuke the sim cards on a regular basis and a cloner to create duplicate backups since the sims are fairly cheap and readily available so one can nuke it on a weekly basis or the old write zeroes to the empty data spaces delete trojan worm phone software in the interim and throw the old one into the high temperature furnace to ensure absolute destruction !

As for the Columbian Army versus FARC it is an area in the world where propaganda rules absolutely on the US side of the fence where torture on all captive victims is the rule rather then the exception and so thus all claims from any US backed government agency would have to be viewed using Occams Razor absolutely for what they claim and that which is reality are at opposite ends of the universe , given the current classic example of a shattered blighted country called Iraq !

But then again , one used to hear much about the same thing back in Chairman Ronnie's time in a country called Nicaragua about how Daniel Ortega's Mob were losing the fight for their own country ! But soon the uneducated peons kicked those evil merkin gringo supported drug lords called the Somoza family butt all the way back across the international border plus a few extra miles for a good measure even back then as in the jungles have no visible border posts !

Really? So they can't search for alcohol, drugs, the odd bomb strapped around the waist? Oh wait that last one is a weapon.

I Had a Savvy too.

Loved it although the battery life was awful, and the aerial always ended up poking you when you had it in your pocket.

However so worth it for the, da da da da da (Puppy Power) noise everytime you got a text message, and also the funky Horrorscope tool!