Refurbished Motorola Xoom tablets may still have old user data

A batch of refurbished Motorola Xoom tablets sold last year weren’t quite as good as new. Motorola has confirmed that some of the tablets it sent to Woot weren’t refurbished properly to erase old user data, meaning that the new users could still see things like account information or photographs. Fortunately, the problem isn’t widespread: of the 6,200 refurbished tablets sold on Woot between September 29 and December 4 of 2011, only about 100 may not have been completely wiped.

If you bought one of these refurbished tablets, or returned a new one that might have been resold, Motorola has created a program to help. For users who returned tablets, the company is offering free two-year credit monitoring through Experian. It’s also trying to track down and wipe the devices — people who bought an affected Xoom through Woot can send it back for refurbishing and receive a $100 gift card. Obviously this was a misstep by Motorola, but we’re glad to see the company responding proactively now that the problem has come to light.