BlackBerry Forums member Andrew Palmer writes this morning that Verizon Wireless sent him a reworked, second-hand 8703e, or "Field Replacement Unit" (FRU) BlackBerry 8703e8703e, to replace his 8703e that melted down after just 60 days use. Yet the Verizon replacement arrived -- "and this I find alarming -- with the previous owner's private data STILL ON IT."

Ooh, that doesn't sound good.

Here's the personal data the replacement unit contained:

• Two active -- and quite accessible -- email accounts.
• All the emails of those accounts
• All her personal contacts
• All her calendar events for October and November, 2006
• All her logged calls
• All other data, unwiped.
  

Here's what Andrew did when he discovered this mess:

• First, I made a full backup of the previous owner's 8703e data.
• Wiped clean the phone, reinstalled BB OS so I could get it working and use it. (Still not fully data enabled, even after 2 hours with Tech Support.)
• Contacted Verizon Tech. and notified them they irresponsibly sent me the previous owner's private data, told them her name, and told them I intended to contact her and inform her about Verizon's carelessness.
• Took the full back up and emailed it to the previous owner (on her yahoo account) and notifed her of how Verizon had compromised her privacy. I included some plain text examples, to authenticate her private information about which I wrote. I also strongly encouraged her to contact Verizon and drop the hammer on them (hell, contact an attorney).
  

Kudos to you, 'drew. You done the right thing.