Recently there has been alot of news about how free charging stations could be reading data from devices that are plugged into them. The obvious solution to this issue is to place an adaptor between the charging station and the device that is only wired to transmit power.
I would sugest that the ideal design of would be a USB micro female to Apple dock male connector. This could be small enough to be carried around in a wallet and as USB micro is the current device charging standard compatability would be good.
This would also have an impact for non Apple devices where a USB micro passthrough addaptor could be used.
Does anyone know of any such device on the market?
This article is the inspiration behind my question.
Best Answer
I know of no device that is sold to act as a write block that also allow full 1A charging, but Apple's patent covering potential upcoming changes to the dock connector might help you if you wanted a DIY hardware solution for the older 30 pin USB connectors.
In the mean time, you have several ways to secure the data without needing a custom piece of hardware.
Furthermore, if you upgrade to iOS 7, anytime you connect to a computer which could potentially read your data, you are alerted to this fact rather than having the device share all data because it's not locked with a passcode.
This new "trust this computer" functionality prevents any access to your device's storage without a positive user step to allow that access.
The device won't talk data to the "charging station" until the passcode is entered on the touchscreen. (Or the astronomically unlikely but theoretically possible chance that the charging station provides the one and only unique to you secure certificate generated and stored on your primary iTunes computer.)
The charging station can't try entering passwords one by one - so it's not like you are at more risk by charging an hour versus 2 minutes.