Motorola: refurb tablets shipped with former owners' data intact

Motorola Mobility has admitted that some refurbished Xoom tablets were sent out to their new owners with previous users' data still present in the gadgets' memory banks.

The company, which is waiting for a thumbs-up from the Feds before it can be swallowed by Google, offered its profuse apologies for the snafu.

Some 6200 Android-based Motorola Xoom tablets were sold through US website Woot between October and December 2011. Out of that number, around 100 went out without being fully erased, Motorola confessed on Friday.

The company said it was offering former Xoom owners a free two-year membership of a local service offering protection against identity theft just in case any of the un-zapped info provides access to secure data.

Change your passwords, Xoom owners who sent their kit back are warned.

And if you plan to return kit - any kit - or sell it on, always do factory reset before you do so, we say.

Meanwhile, worried Xoom owners can contact Motorola through its Xoom Returns website to see if they are among those affected. ®