Motorola's Big Mistake of 2012 Happened Already, Customer's Data in Jeopardy - The UpStream

Motorola's Big Mistake of 2012 Happened Already, Customer's Data in Jeopardy

posted Sunday Feb 12, 2012 by Nicholas DiMeo

Motorola's Big Mistake of 2012 Happened Already, Customer's Data in Jeopardy

Motorola just seems to have a lot of ups and downs as of late. While their CES booth was certainly miles ahead of what was presented last year, the disaster of the "CES Best In Show" Xoom still looms. This week, Motorola can chalk another mistake to their "oopsies" column. Motorola sold a batch of Xooms to the one day, one deal site Woot who then resold those units between October and December 2011.

Everything would seem perfect except for the fact that out of 6,200 Xoom tablet that were refurbished, 100 of them "may not have been completely cleared of the original owner's data prior to resale." So a previous user's private data, possibly including credit card numbers and the like may still exist on these tablets, not to mention usernames and passwords to various sites, email accounts and other sensitive information. Like I said, oopsies.

The security mishap affects customers who purchased and then brought back a WiFi version of the Xoom to Amazon.com, Best Buy, BJ's Wholesale, eBay, Office Max, RadioShack, Sam's Club, Staples and a couple select standalone retailers between March and October. To fix this, they are providing these customers with two years of free credit protection service from Experian's ProtectMyID Alert system. Any customer who may be affected should contact 1.866.926.9803 and sign up for the service. Motorola (and common sense) says to change any and all passwords to any service that may have been downloaded to or visited from the tablet. Users who have done a factory or "hard" reset to the device prior to return obviously do not need to worry.

Woot is working with Motorola to find who purchased the units that may not have been completely reset so that they can wipe or replace the tablets. Concerned customers should also contact Motorola Mobility at 1.800.734.5870 or go to Motorola's Xoom Return page to see if their tablet is on the list of possibly affected devices.

The question is, is this a problem that exists a lot more than we realize and companies cover it up, or is this a one-off sort of thing? How comfortable does it make you feel? We want to know in the comments section below.

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