I just read through this post “How NOT to steal a Sidekick“. Its pretty long, but you can read the first paragraph to get the gist of it and then skim down the page to view the photos.
Long story short is this person left their SideKick (one of those phone/camera/internet devices) in a cab. The next people in the cab apparently found it, and instead of returning it they kept it. Well, the way a SideKick works is that all data is upload to T-Mobile’s servers. So when the person got their new ($300) SideKick, all the activity was logged including AOL names, passwords, and all the photos they had taken with the camera. So this guy decides to help his friend out by posting on the internet (this is why I love the internet) all the details including the photos that the dummies took with the sidekick.
This brings back the memories of my younger days… When people used to “find” a pager/beeper (yes, I go back that far) and take it to the local pager store who would turn it on for you -no problem, no questions asked. You can’t do that anymore. Not in this age of “Big Brother is watching you” with GPS in the cell phones, and you being tracked all over the place. It wouldn’t surpise me if in the not too distant future these gadgets (which become increasingly more expensive AND necessary day-to-day) will try to “escape” their captors. Or maybe give you a cozy 300,000 volt zap if you fail to input the proper passwords.
If they don’t build it soon enough, I think I’ll invent one myself.