Phone tales...

Kids, always erase the info saved in your cellphone before returning it to the cell provider.

Example #1- McCain campaign garage sale story

Example #2- Since most of you are my horse racing friends I gotta tell you this story, but never had the occasion to bring it up before.

In 2005 I was working for a company that refurbishes cellular devices for Verizon wireless. At one point my job was to check the phones being returned. It was a warehouse setting, and our department unpacked the shipments coming directly from the consumers and stores, and then ran the phones through a series of tests to diagnose problems to be fixed.

Because we were the first step in the process of inbound phones, the devices had not been "flashed" yet. To flash is an industry term to remove old software from the cellphone and put new software on it void of any previous customer's personal information. So what I'm trying to say is as employees we saw ALL of people's personal information on their phones. Their call lists, family photos, nude photos, bank account numbers and credit card numbers and passwords that they saved, everything you can imagine.

So anyway, when I picked up one phone I saw that the wallpaper had a race horse on it. I thought, "Hey that horse looks familiar." Turns out it was a close-up headshot of Afleet Alex as he won the Belmont Stakes. When I checked the photo gallery, sure enough it was full of photos taken by someone who was at least close to the winning team. There were photos of Jeremy Rose in the jocks room, barn shots of Alex, the banners in the owner's suite and several people in that party, and even some shots of Rose and a friend as they hung out around town riding Sedgways and goofing off while in Lexington for the Derby. No it wasn't my job to check every single photo, lol. But it was fun. Not to mention reading all the names in the contact list, phone numbers of the top jockeys, trainers, and farms on the East coast.

(this photo credit to the NYTimes)

What I had to wonder about was the odds of me seeing that particular phone. We received on average 60,000 phones per day, there were about 240 people in my department besides me on 3 different shifts, and the pallet next to my workstation had about 500 cardboard boxes of phones on it to be checked as did the other 80 workstations. Not to mention, I'd say somewhere around 30% of the phones can't be checked because of broken screens, software problems, etc. So what are the odds that I myself, a horseracing fan who once worked at the track, happened to see that phone. Irony or fate? Maybe. Or maybe a fluke of chance.

Anyway, moral of the story is to always erase your private information off your cellphones! Other eyes may see it.