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Nine out of ten mobile devices sold on eBay are loaded with sensitive personal and corporate information that could be easily retrieved by hackers, a security probe has found. Out of the nine devices up for auction, which included PDAs and smartphones, engineers at Trust Digital recovered almost 27,000 pages of potentially damaging material. Their haul included a corporate swag bag of sales information, tax details, client records, address books, computer passwords, product road maps, Web logs and business correspondence. In terms of individuals’ privacy, the sample exposed medical records, personal correspondence, user passwords and telling calendar records. The information was retained in the flash memory of the devices because of users’ failure to perform the advanced hard reset required to delete the data. Even IT professionals failed to wipe their systems, with the probe citing devices belonging to an employee of a major software company and an employee of a Web services firm. One former owner was traced as belonging to a corporate counsel of a multi-billion dollar technology company serving the legal market. The results were seized upon as further evidence of the vulnerabilities both individuals and organisations face if they pass on mobile devices without securing the data within. Damaged reputations, major breaches of corporate security and even blackmail were billed as inevitable for those who fail to act if their devices are lost, stolen or inadequately deactivated. Nick Magliato, chief executive of Trust Digital, said: “Personal and corporate data is being sold on the open market through eBay, and it’s also available to anyone who finds, steals or purchases a used smartphone or PDA from any other source. “With nearly 2 billion smartphones currently on the market, the potential for having this information fall into the wrong hands is staggering.” Consumers were urged to protect themselves by enabling the password function on their devices, asking their mobile phone providers for help about data security, and ‘hard wiping’ their devices before selling them. Owners of Palm Treo 650s and RIM devices should consult the respective vendors to access the built-in hard wipe function. For other devices, commercial hard wipe products and software solutions are available. “The general public needs to immediately be made aware of this fact,” Mr Magliato said. “Whether you’re talking about pilfering an individual’s private files or stealing corporate secrets, this adds up to a very real data theft epidemic.” Aug 31, 2006 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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