Ok, so lets say you’re getting rid of some old devices that you no longer use. You’d wipe them clean or at least remove all sensitive data, email and contacts wouldn’t you? Of course you would! By the sounds of things, it looks like the folks over at the McCain-Palin camp could have used a few pointers from us.
The peeps at the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters held a yard sale of sorts the other day. Up for sale was a whole whack of BlackBerry devices. Upon noticing this, some ‘operatives’ from Fox 5 in Washington D.C. noticed the cheap Berry’s (for just $20 a piece) and snapped some up thinking they’d make great gifts for the holidays.
However, this is where things get a little disturbing. After giving one of the purchased BlackBerry’s a bit of a charge, one of the Fox 5 folks noticed that one Berry in particular had 50 contacts for ‘campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists’ all intact in the contact list. Also found on the device were hundreds of emails that were failed to be removed, as any semi-intelligent person would have done.
Chalk this one up to indifference, carelessness, or just plain frustration from a campaign that took a heavy beating during the election. A campaign spokesperson has said that ‘procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure’… Good luck with that. I sincerely hope for everyone’s sake here that the device purchased by the Fox 5 ‘operative’ was the only one containing the sensitive data.
[Via: myfoxdc]