A couple of days ago, Holly Sanders reported in The New York Post that T-Mobile stores in the New York area are selling out of Sidekick II’s in the aftermath of reports of the release of Paris Hilton’s personal information that had been stored on her handheld. Most people writing about this in the gadget blog community seem a bit surprised.
I think a lot of peoples’ curiosities in the Sidekick II were piqued by the fact that these devices were a key part of a major national news story. The people who rushed out to buy them in the last few days thought, “I can use this to take pictures, send emails, and make phone calls, and stars like Paris Hilton and Vin Diesel are using it, so it must be cool.” The information security issues that resonated with some of us gadget heads probably didn’t concern them.
Since T-Mobile closed the security holes in My.T-Mobile.com, it’s unlikely that they will suffer customer defections as a result of this incident. I think if security incidents had continued to occur, they would have started losing customers faster than the celebrity halo effect added them. [ via TechNewsWorld and Gizmodo ]