Motorola Admits Selling Xoom Tablets With User Data

Motorola Mobility has owned up to a data breach after it said that it failed to wipe some user data from roughly 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Motorola Xoom WiFi tablets.

These tablets had been refurbished and resold via the daily deals Website Woot between October and December 2011.

Original owners who performed a factory data reset before returning the device were not impacted by this data exposure.

Data Breach

Motorola warned the user data could include information users previously stored on the 10.1-inch Android slate, including user names and passwords for email and social sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as other Websites and applications that require user credentials. The data could also include objects stored on the machine, including documents and photographs.

“While this matter likely affects only a small number of refurbished units, Motorola has a strong commitment to its consumers, and is proactively responding to mitigate any risk to its customers,” the company said in a statement. “Motorola is committed to rigorous data-protection practices in order to protect its customers, and will continue to take the necessary steps to achieve this objective.”

Motorola encourages customers who purchased a refurbished Xoom WiFi tablet from Woot.com between October and December 2011 to visit motorola.com/xoomreturn or to call Motorola Mobility customer support at 1-800-734-5870 to determine if their tablet is affected.

To mitigate risks associated with the possible compromise of user data from previous Xoom owners, Motorola said it is offering customers who purchased and returned a Xoom WiFi tablet to a number of retail outlets a complimentary two-year membership of Experian’s ProtectMyID Alert credit-monitoring service.

Customers must have purchased those tablets from Amazon.com, Best Buy, BJ’s Wholesale, eBay, Office Max, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, or Staples and a few other independent retailers between March and October 2011

Poor Seller

Motorola suggested Xoom owners who gave up their tablet for resale to contact Experian at 1-866-926-9803 to sign up for the protection service, and to change their email and social media passwords.

Launched last February, the Xoom was the first Android tablet based on Google’s Honeycomb operating system, a build the company tailored for the screen size and resolution of tablets.

The device never took off; Motorola said it sold only 1 million tablets for all of 2011. Apple sold 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter alone.

Motorola is awaiting word from US and European regulatory bodies on whether or not they will bless the company’s planned $12.5 billion (£7.9bn) bid to merge with Google.