McCain Campaign BlackBerry Yields Sensitive Data

15.12.2008
If reports that President-Elect for reasons of national security sound paranoid, think again. A Fox television affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that it was able to purchase a from a fire sale at campaign headquarters for a mere US$20, and the handheld came with an unexpected bonus: it was

Most of us rely heavily on PCs, laptops, and mobile devices for all aspects of our lives and work. In the process, those devices are likely to accumulate all sorts of information that we'd rather keep private. The trouble arises when we replace our equipment and want to sell off the old. How can we be sure we're not giving away more than we intended?

As it turns out, the McCain campaign's mistake could have been easily avoided. Wiping a BlackBerry is actually fairly simple for most models. From the Options menu, choose Security Options, then General Settings. From that screen, press the Menu button to pull up a list of actions. Choose Wipe Handheld, and soon you should be all set.

If your BlackBerry is centrally managed by your company's IT department, however, you may need to take additional steps to that may have been installed.

Finally, if your BlackBerry accepts add-on flash memory cards, make sure you've erased those, too (or just remove them before you sell the handheld).

You should always wipe PCs and laptops before you sell them, also, but this can be more problematic. Many new computers no longer ship with an operating system CD that can be used to reformat the drive. Some manufacturers include a "recovery partition" on the system's hard drive that can reset the system to its factory-new configuration, but you'll need to check the documentation that came with the PC to determine the correct procedure.