Motorola Xoom tablets sold with previous owners' data

Moto has made a boo-boo. It recently provided 6,200 refurbished Xoom tablets to a discount website to sell on cheap. Except, err, some of them weren't really refurbished.

Motorola reckons 100 of the total batch "may not have been completely cleared of the original owner's data prior to resale," it said in a statement, meaning whatever the previous owner had on there was still on there when they were sold on. Whoops.

The tablets were sold via deals website Woot.com between October and December last year. It's unlikely any Brits will be affected, seeing as the site doesn't ship outside the US. There's no mention of the Moto mishap on the site, so it seems Motorola is taking the flak for this one.

Anyone who bought the tablet could see any info the previous owner left on it, including photos, documents, videos, usernames and passwords. Dodgy hair metal collections could also be at risk.

Motorola is offering some recompense to anyone who bought and then returned a Xoom to Amazon.com, Best Buy, BJ's Wholesale, eBay, Office Max, Radio Shack, Sam's Club or Staples between March and October last year. If that's you, get in touch with Motorola and you'll receive a free two-year membership to Experian's ProtectMyID Alert to mitigate the risks. You're also advised to change your passwords.

It's not been a good week for privacy. Earlier, we reported O2 was accidentally revealing your phone number to any website you visited on an O2 device. The operator then fixed the bug, blaming technical changes during routine maintenance.

Should companies take greater care with our data? Do we share too much nowadays? What steps can you take to cover yourself? Let us know in the comments below, or over on our Facebook page.