Former Morgan Stanley Exec Should Have Purged His Blackberry Before Selling it on eBay

Wired magazine has a story about an (unidentified) former Morgan Stanley executive who, some time after leaving the firm, sold his Blackberry email pager on eBay. He didn’t seem to realize that he had left a great deal of confidential information on the pager. Some of that information conceivably could have gotten him in trouble with the SEC if the buyer had traded on inside information. His former employer was not pleased.

Quotable quotes:

• “Paige Steinbock, a partner in headhunting agency Korn/Ferry International, called the database of Morgan Stanley employee names and home phone numbers ‘a virtual gold mine of information.'”
• “The VP who sold the BlackBerry said he had no idea data could remain on a device long after the battery was removed.”
• “Judging from the windfall of info captured on the VP’s BlackBerry, the financial expert interviewed for this story said he could only imagine the wealth of information people could gather if they placed ads for used BlackBerries online and waited for the devices to roll in.”