Gently Used iPod for Sale, Comes Complete With Military Secrets

It’s a good thing we’re on friendly terms with New Zealand, because one of the residents of that green, hilly island recently acquired 60 pages of sensitive U.S. military data. Total cost of national secrets? $15. Which would’ve been great if that’s what the man who bought it was in the market for, but he was actually just looking for a working MP3 player, which Ars Technica reports the used iPod was not. Data found on the iPod included the personal information of military personnel, and details about mission briefings and deployment. The purchaser of the used iPod, Chris Ogle, has been looking through the information, and even tried calling some of the numbers listed. Some of the calls actually connected with the correct individuals, indicating that the information is not, in fact, out of date. He also says he’s made the U.S. Department of Defense aware of the mix-up, but has yet to receive any word back from them. Maybe they’re hoping that if they stay real quiet this will all go away. This is a fairly sensational example, but the fact is that many people don’t think about making sure their personal data is really gone from their iPod before selling it or trading it on the secondhand market through sites like eBay, Kijiji, and craigslist. Your iPod, just like a computer hard drive, contains data that can be recovered unless you go out of your way to make sure it can’t. Proper data erasure is even more important now that the iPod Touch can retrieve and store emails and other sensitive information. If you have an older iPod that still supports disk mode, then you’ll want to use Disk Utility to completely reformat the drive, and then Restore the iPod using the latest firmware available for that model.

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Gently Used iPod for Sale, Comes Complete With Military Secrets