Thanks Synthetic Girl for posting this in Back Page News. Don"t tell your cell phone any secrets. It might not keep them. Second-hand phones purchased over the Internet surrendered credit card numbers and bank account passwords, business secrets and even evidence of adultery.
One married man"s girlfriend sent a text message to his cell phone: His wife was getting suspicious. Perhaps they should cool it for a few days.
"So," she wrote, "I"ll talk to u next week."
"You want a break from me? Then fine," he wrote back.
Later, the married man bought a new phone. He sold his old one on eBay, at Internet auction, for $290.
The guys who bought it now know his secret.
The married man had followed the directions in his phone"s manual to erase all his information, including lurid exchanges with his lover. But it wasn"t enough.
A company, Trust Digital of McLean, Va., bought 10 different phones on eBay this summer to test phone-security tools it sells for businesses. The phones all were fairly sophisticated models capable of working with corporate e-mail systems.
On a personal note, I lent my old Sony Ericcson K700i to an ex-girlfriend a week ago, after her phone broke. I thought I had removed everything stored in the phone memory, but when she was configuring the phone she showed me phone camera pictures that I had forgot to delete of another ex-girlfriend. Luckily they were "clean" pictures! - Ed