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Are Your Secrets On eBay?

Michael Byers

By Jennifer L. Schenker in Paris

Are Your Secrets On eBay?

Too many employees fail to erase or encrypt sensitive data on their mobile devices before tossing them out, say researchers from British phone company BT Group, the University of Glamorgan in Wales, and Edith Cowan University in Australia. To prove its point, the team recently purchased 161 discarded handheld devices from online auction sites and secondhand outlets in Britain and Australia.

One in five, found the researchers, contained details about salaries, company finances, business plans, or board meetings. A BlackBerry once owned by the European sales director of a major Japanese firm, for instance, had the goods on company clients, as well as the executive’s bank account numbers—along with his car make and registration. “My generic advice to people is to delete your data, but the reality is not that simple,” says Andy Jones, BT’s head of information security research. “Someone inside corporations has to set policy and tell people exactly what they should do when they get rid of mobile devices.”