DETROIT—Wednesday, the news broke that a Detroit woman who bought a new phone from a local Sprint store was surprised to discovered that porn had been loaded on the phone.
Rhonda Lee said she was “embarrassed” and “upset" at the find, which occurred when she was showing off the Sprint EVO HTC to friends. The phone apparently contained five porn videos, some as long as 12 minutes.
"I'm so, so embarrassed,” said Lee, “you couldn't imagine … I mean for you to be going through your phone and you have friends and you're going through your phone and all of a sudden porn shows up. I mean so, so upset.”
Many of her friends are religious, she said, which only added to her sense of embarrassment.
At first, the reaction in the AVN office was, “How thoughtful of Sprint to preload porn.” After all, we live in a bubble of sin. But we quickly realized that our perspective on these things is horribly skewed, and revised our reaction. “That’s outrageous,” we thought.
But then the plot thickened even more. It turned out the phone was not new, but had been previously purchased and then re-sold, as new, which made the story even stranger.
Why was a used phone was being sold as new, and why had the content on the used phone not been removed by a techie? Aren't they always finding child porn on people's computers and cell phones that they've brought in for a servicing? Was it just Lee's bad luck that she got the lazy Sprint techie?
According to AnnArbor.com, Sprint said Lee could get a replacement phone, which was very nice of them, even if it doesn't quite rise to the level of an apology.
Lee remains mortified by the experience, however, as well as “disgusted and mortified" by the fact that they left porn on her phone.
Several news outlets contacted Sprint for comment, to no avail. But the lesson from this episode is clear. If you're going to sell a used phone as new, make sure not to leave porn on it.
