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Used BlackBerrys Sold at McCain-Palin Blowout, Contacts and E-mails Intact

by Laura June on December 12, 2008 at 06:15 PM


It's pretty much common sense that when you're ditching your old cell phone you want to erase your personal data, contacts and emails -- or at least try to. Oh sure, there are plenty of examples of failing to do so, but this one's rather... shall we say, "special." Some operatives at Fox 5 in Washington, D.C. booked over to the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters' yard sale yesterday, and they saw some ultra cheap BlackBerry -- just $20 a pop, probably an inventor's discount -- so they picked up a few, undoubtedly thinking they'd make nice holiday gifts. They were kind of surprised to find that, after giving the 'Berrys some juice, one of them had 50 contacts for "campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists" as well as hundreds of e-mails. When reached for comment, a campaign spokesperson said that "procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure," followed minutes later by a blank email CC'd to his entire address book with the subject line "We're so screwed."

Tags: blackberry, mccain, mccain palin, MccainPalin, personal data, PersonalData, politics, rim, security, yard sale, YardSale

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