Motorola Tablet Snafu Exposes Some Users to Privacy Risks

At Gadget Lab we're system-wiping fools. With new smartphones and tablets coming through the office every week, we're religious about doing complete system security resets whenever we send products back to manufacturers. It's not just common courtesy. It's a hedge against releasing private emails and photos into the wild.

You would think manufacturers would exercise the same caution, but today Motorola issued a major fail alert: From October to December of last year, 100 out of 6,200 refurbished Xooms sold from Woot.com may have contained the previous owner's personal data.

Motorola announced in a press release that the affected tablets may not have been properly wiped, and a variety of information could be available to new users of the tablets.

It is possible that users might have stored photographs and documents. They may have also stored user names and passwords for email and social media accounts, as well as other password-protected sites and applications.

Motorola is offering a free two-year membership to Experian’s ProtectMyID program to affected customers.

That's not the only security snafu that's happened recently. A boy whose mom took his iPhone into the Apple Store for repair got an unpleasant surprise upon the device's return: He was receiving all of a stranger's personal -- and occasionally inappropriate -- iMessages on his iPhone. The stranger? An Apple employee.

In this specific instance, Apple says it wasn't a bug. Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison told The Loop that: “This was an extremely rare situation that occurred when a retail employee did not follow the correct service procedure and used their personal SIM to help a customer who did not have a working SIM. This resulted in a temporary situation that has since been resolved by the employee.”

Basically, iMessage detected the employee's SIM and connected with it, delivering all of his private iMessages to the child without his knowledge. This has happened before when an iOS user's iPhone was stolen, but all in all, it's a pretty exceptional occurrence.

In any case, we give massive props to any company that is prompt and transparent about addressing a potential security issue. In Motorola's case, that also included apologizing and offering a reasonable solution to the problem. There's nothing worse than realizing your personal data could be out in the wild, long after the initial mishap actually occurred.

via AllThingsD