Motorola announced yesterday that they may have sold as many as 100 refurbished Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi tablets without first wiping the old owner’s data off of them.
The tablets were part of 6,200 that they sold through Amazon owned Woot.com. The tablets were sold between October and December 2011.
In a statement, Motorola said “While this matter likely affects only a small number of refurbished units, Motorola has a strong commitment to its consumers, and is 
proactively responding to mitigate any risk to its customers.” The also stated that the tablets sold outside of the October to December 2011 timeline were properly wiped of the previous owner’s data.
Motorola is offering shoppers who bought and returned a Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi tablet between March and October 2011 a free two-year membership to Experian’s ProtectMyID. They are asking affected shoppers to call Experian at 1-866-926-9803 to sign up. They are also advising those affected to change passwords on their e-mail and social networking sites. According to Motorola, original owners that performed a factory data reset before returning their Xoom would not be impacted.
The company is also asking shoppers to return the refurbished units purchased from Woot from October to December, so that they can make sure the previous owner’s data is wiped clean.
Of course, it may be challenging to get new owners to send in their refurbished tablets without some form of added incentive, just due to the fear of having their own data wiped. The announcement from Motorola made no mention of that issue. However, they are asking the new owners to visit motorola.com/xoomreturn or call 1-800-734-5870 (Option 1) to see if their tablet is affected.
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