The sales director of a large Japanese company thought he was doing a good deed when he donated his BlackBerry for recycling. But later a group of British and Australian researchers discovered the device and found it still contained sensitive data, including bank account numbers, a business plan for his organization, and the identity of his main customers.
Indeed, a September 2008 survey of 160 mobiles by the researchers -- a team from British Telecom, Wales' University of Glamorgan, and Australia's Edith Cowan University -- found that one in five mobile communications devices still held sensitive information. BlackBerrys contained the most, with 43 percent of those examined harboring data that could be considered a threat to the individual or the organization.
