App data security on jailbroken iPhones

Question

If I'm not mistaken (and if I am mistaken, here or in what I say below, please correct me), non-jailbroken iPhones provide two broad areas of storage space:

• for apps (and data that comes bundled with apps);
• for user-managed files.

I understand that the former is protected storage, meaning that data bundled with an app and stored in that area is not accessible to the user except via the app.

On a jailbroken iPhone, does this protected area still exist? If so, what protections remain; i.e. is data stored within it still inaccessible to the user?

Answer 1

On a jailbroken iPhone the user has full access to all resources. The user will have more control over the device than any developer. There is no place to hide secrets on the device, even memory is accessible.

Answer 2

Even on a non-Jailbroken phone it's easy to extract the user data from the backups that iTunes creates when the user syncs (unless the user specifically enables the "encrypt backups" option).

The apps themselves are nominally encrypted using iTunes DRM, but since you can download apps in iTunes on a desktop and (AIUI) easily remove the DRM, again, even users without jailbroken devices can access your resources.