Walmart's Zunes, now with more porn?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Dec 20th 2006 8:15AM
posted Dec 20th 2006 8:15AM
It's not the first time, nor the last, that people will find porn on (supposedly) new or recycled consumer electronics. This time it happened to a family in Southside Chicago who purchased Microsoft's Zune from the local Walmart for their 12 year-old daughter. The daughter, who says the box looked like it had been opened (the charger was missing) discovered that her player contained porn. When confronted, the Walmart store manager initially blamed Microsoft for the pre-load. Later, a Walmart spokesman said they would investigate the matter and provide the couple with a full refund plus a $25 gift card -- presumably to pick up a copy of "My Two Daddies" to help the mother explain to her daughter why the "5 men were having sex with each other." Uh, "join the social" Microsoft?
[Thanks Justin, and everyone who sent this in]
Read (video link)
Doesn't appear to be Microsoft's fault. Still, Zune doesn't come with an AC Charger (only a USB sync cable which allows you to charge using USB), so a missing AC Charger isn't a sign it was opened. The package being opened is a sign it was opened.
I am going to assume it was a Walmrt employee.
This story is great but the picture is better - look at her nails. Those are cat-fight nails!
right on todd! I was looking at her ghetto nails and not the zune.
Don't be racist, Rob. There's plenty of white woman with nails like that.
Those are some scary looking nails!
You'd think stores would have started checking returned items by now.
So thats what MS has been doing this whole time!
I'm no Zune fan but I don't see how a comment like "Uh, "join the social" Microsoft?" is really necessary here.. seems like Wal-Mart just re-sold a returned item. No way for MS to control that...
The lesson here is don't shop at Wal-Mart. Not the first time they've sold a returned item filled with porn. (Although, if you like porn, maybe the lesson is *do* shop at Wal-Mart. There are easier and more reliable ways of getting it, though.)
> No way for MS to control that...
Does Zune provide a function "Reset to Factory Defaults"?
If answer is "Yes" - then blame Wal*Mart. If answer is "No" - then blame M$ for not providing the vital functions.
P.S. I bet "Reset" function is there. Though it is M$ we are talking about.
It's called a joke. See, it was a gangbang, so it's social...aww, nevermind. You obviously have no sense of humor.
I'm betting on a pissed off employee of the store. You are talking a rather narrow market for full on man on man gangbangs.
Maybe it was loaded post sale to get some extra gift cards from wally world.
Porn really drives the technology market. We should all just embrace it.
http://www.vequalsir.com
Yupp, that's some foxy nails.
Just one more reason not to shop at Walmart.
I agree, this isn't Microsoft's problem, it's Walmart's problem. They didn't inspect the item before reboxing it and placing it back on the shelf. This is a problem at ALL retailers, and something they need to start thinking about for future. With more and more devices containing some sort of storage device, they need to learn how to clear it before re-selling a returned item. Heck next thing you know the RIAA, MPAA, etc will go after retailers who resell an item with video and music files "pre-loaded" from someone else's return.
This will be a problem from here on out for all retailers selling devices with storage capabilities. Heck if you get caught in the future from the RIAA and they say you downloaded music, just tell them you bought the computer at Wal-Mart and it came with it "pre-installed" and you were just enjoying it. "Honestly, it was a cheap open-box item, and it was nice of Wal-Mart to fill my 120 GB hard drive with free music."
Companies need to watch themselves, and learn how to "recondition" devices before putting them back up for sale.
Sorry...I misunderstood the Zune squirting thing...
Has anyone considered that this little girl did this. These days even five year olds know how to download porn. The parents should not be naive.
I wouldn't put all the blame on MS or WM right now.
Yeah, cause a little girl is going to download gay porn onto her Zune the first chance she gets. That makes sense, let's blame the girl and ignore the fact that the product had obviously been used by a previous customer.
ha ha ha - i like your thinking, but an older brother/dad seems more likely to me than a five year old girl
If she put porn on her Zune, why would she have told her parents? She almost certainly didn't put this on there, and was either MS or Walmart's fault. Is it a used Zune? If so, and it was resold to Walmart, Walmart should have cleared HDD before putting it back on the shelves.
"Join the social" ROTFLMAOOL
Nothing new. I bought a bag of shrimp at WalMart once. Got it home and found the bag filled with prOn.
(Sorry)
Hahahahahahahaha, shrimp pr0ns, I thought it funny even before I caught on to the pr0n/prawn bit. That was priceless. Best post I've seen, now I have to explain to my co-workers why I just cracked up.
Engadget has made their stance on the Zune very clear from day one, they take any opportunity they come across to bash the thing. Hell, read the post about the Zune now being Vista compatible. It's good news, and still they found a way to slander the product.
So don't be surprised if you see more Zune bashing in the future.
Did you even read the story? The package was opened, most likely meaning a customer bought it and returned it to Walmart, how is Microsoft going to reset it?
Most of gadgets - for example my SunDisk Sansa included - has special function: "Reset to Factory Defaults". Activating that function resets all options, cleans all databases and deletes all files. Easy (of course after confirming N times that you sure want to do that).
I was always wondering why CE manufacturers even bother to include such self-destruct functions with their devices. Now I know.
My question is, did M$ provided such function in Zune or not.
> This will be a problem from here on out for all retailers selling devices with storage capabilities.
I have kind'a being in that land. This problem - cleaning of storage devices - is 100% problem created by Microsoft.
The only file system properly read/write supported across all kind of OSs out there is FAT12/16/32 and all consumer electronic devices are pre-formatted with FAT for sake of better compatibility. You do not expect USB stick to be formatted with Ext2/3 of Linux of HPFS of OS/2? Aren't you?
So the problem here is that Microsoft forces everybody to switch to their proprietary NTFS which is supported very poorly outside of Windows worlds.
Starting from Win2k, Microsoft handicapped format utility so it doesn't allow to create FAT partitions larger than 4GB. IOW, retailers basically have no tool to return the device to its pristine form. The tools used by storage manufacturers are proprietary and not easily available: some speculated that nobody wants to provoke M$ by releasing such tools.
P.S. I personally keep in office Linux Live-CD specifically for such occasions: it can format anything to everything.
This is Wal-Mart's boo-boo, not Microsoft's.
Regarding a full reset of the Zune - yes, Wal-Mart should have used the Zune's factory reset feature. Unfortunately, it's a non-obvious keyboard combination - see this FAQ entry - http://www.zunerama.com/zune-faq/faq.php?s=2#64 - and I doubt anyone at Wal-Mart would have known about it.
Still, very sloppy of Wal-Mart. This should be part of their procedure when re-stocking.
Unless, of course, this is somebody scamming Wal-Mart to get some easy pain-and-suffering money.
I bet the mother planted the porn in hopes for a bigger gift card.
Well...now they won't have to explain what 'squirt' means...
Seriously, that's what they get for buying her a crappy Zune.
Gay male porn, wtf? What ever happened to "Lesbian sorority fu*fest"? I mean come on, if you're going to load some porn on that thing, put some stuff that people are interested in dammit!!
Crappy Zune? That could have happened on any kind of product.
I'm betting that mom did it to get some publicity. If we see Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton show up you know mom did it.
or
WM didn't reset the device when it was returned. Can we honestly expect WM employees to reset a Zune when they can't clean up that mess on aisle 4?
You know a gay man did NOT load that porn on there, we would never be caught dead with a Zune.
Ah, this story is friggin hilarious. What an interesting thing for an innocent 12-year-old girl to see.
Troy, I agree with you...
Looking at those ghetto nails, I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps this is all a sham to try and shake down some $$$ from Wal*Mart.
If it's an electronic item and I can see it's been opened, I ain't buying it.
The bigger question here is "WHY did the mother buy her daugher a ZUNE?" It's incredibly hideously (on the outside) and as heavy as a small external hdd. There's a gazillion mp3 players out there that are cheaper and better looking than that monstrocity.
There is 1 good thing to say bout the Zune: They caused Apple to lower prices for their iPODs.
Not true, losburritos, Apple lowered the iPod's prices by $50 about two days before the Zune came out when they introduced the 5.5g iPod and new nanos and shuffles. So unless Apple had some sort of super-secret undercover detective over at Redmond, they did it the complete opposite way, to make the Zune $50 more expensive (than the iPod).
If they were smart about it, Walmart would find out the customer info on the refund and question the original consumer. Though, I feel, if wally world is going to re-sell the used product, they need to make sure it is back to factory defaults. They didn't and they bought back their freedom for $25 walmart card. BTW, what kind of parent buys their 5 year old a $250 PMP?
They forget to clean Zunes. Ewww!
Eh... not 5 year old. Sorry.
Ha. im waiting for someone to buy an XBOX premium and return it back to the store with a little gift on the Hard Drive (Unwraped, sort of speak)).
hah @ Adam Christopher & Shmoe
... I'm with NHAnimator, if I see any electronic box with even the slightest of nicks, I'm looking for another box. I learned my lesson way back in 94' ... bought an open box PC from Circuit City for college (saved a few hunderd deer). Fuck all, that god damned thing changed my life. I went from majoring in Psychology/Chemistry to a major in Comp. Engineering just so I could type a fucking paper without having to hit save every 5 words in fear of the thing crashing and losing my work.
Sadly, the intarnets wasn't as widespread back then as it is now, I got no pr0n ... I did get a bios password which was unknown to me and a free install of CompuServe which took up 50% of my 320mb hard drive.
I'm not a fan of the Zune ... or those ho-ish nails. My vote = skanky mom ftpr0n
The same parents that would buy their children $600, $300, $250 and sometimes $1200 game consol.
M$ needs to throw any incentive to get people to buy their brown bricks
The reason why i dont like wal-mart is because theres an excessive amount of women with nails like this ciruclating the wal-mart floors.
This story is about as real as the finger in the Wendy's Chili
Wait, why on earth would you call this story fake? The accusation could be fake, sure. The only person who can verify that the box looked like it had been opened before they bought it... is the customer. The girl and/or her parents. They could've put gay porn on there themselves in hopes of suing The Walton's Mart for "mental anguish" or some crap like that. Look at them nails, that just screams, "poor ghetto trash who'd be happy to fleece a big business for a few extra bucks towards their next crack hit." I've had kids in my rather low-class neighborhood jump in front of my car and try to pretend I'd hit them and their parents come running out pretending like the kid's injured, I *know* this crap happens. (thank god for witnesses).
Although I do think it's much more likely that Wal-mart just reboxed a returned Zune, or an employee was pulling a prank. I don't think the story itself is fake though...
Are they really selling so badly that Microsoft has to throw in pr0n to move units?
"Join the social" taken way too far !!!!
How bout this situation??? The little girl connects her Zune to the computer and the Zune software automatically sync in all the media on the computer. Her parents or any of her siblings(if she has any) could have downloaded any of this crap and it would have been sync into the Zune. So I think is the more likely situation. With those nails, who knows what that lady is in to....
Thanks Engadget for providing me with another anti-Microsoft article.
At the end of video you can see that the mom has a tongue piercing too. Cat-fight nails + tongue piercing = sweet combination.
I guess the Zune is living up to it's name, at least
Yes engadget, thank you for this enlightening story. Very enlightening indeed, especially with regards to your readership. I see ignorance and bigotry are alive and well, even in the tech-geek community.
sad.
And the fact that your screenshot is from FOX news doesn't help either.
The only ignorance is your's in regard to bigotry.
Drive back to your golf game in your Mercedes...
So how do you know the family is from the "ghetto"? I am curious what the responses would be if she had a different manicure...
lol dude have you ever been to southside chi-town? pretty much narrows it down.
Holy mother of horrible fingernails batman!
JL: the irony in your post makes my head spin--thanks for the laugh!
This proves the Zune and M$ are gay.
The Count--- you seriously must be kidding! I think you missed the point entirely. It was a sad attempt at providing another perception, or an even sadder joke. The reset is or should be an included option with the product.
No go get your panties straightened out!
Did Bill Gates lose his Zune already?..lol
wow this community is so offensive. The internet does allow us all to be who we are i guess. It is good to know that people who get their nails done are ghetto trash. read: black and poor. I'd have more respect if you all just called it a case of "nigger opportunism". At least back in the day the country used to tell us (black AMERICANS) that we are shit to our faces without stupid little insinuations. I hope something profound happens in all of your lives that help you to understand that we are all here and we all while not the same, have the same goals, aspirations and humanity.
-sun
Jean was right. I bet the video was on mom and dad's PC. Easier to return to wallyworld than admit being in the closet.
So uh, where I can I download this media for um, inspection? I am pissed that my Zune didn't come with gay porn.
Finger in the bowl of chile.
I blame the parents too. South Side of Chicago isn't exactly the type of neighborhood where you have parents buying their children $250 media players and giving it to them prior to Christmas. I also don't know what 12 year old girl would want a Zune. At the end of the interview, the mother specifically suggested that $25 wasn't enough for the "trouble" of having to explain to her child what the five men were doing.
I am willing to bet Wal-Mart will just flip them some cash after they threaten to sue.
Buying a used zune from wal-mart. What do you expect? I bet you every zune that is returned to wal mart has this crap on it.
If someone is loading devices with gay porn and returning it as a joke, then they are gonna get caught.
but if they are legitimately using the device to view porn, it would be quite a scene if every time a device was returned, it was analyzed at the return counter.
"Look, we cant take this device back until you erase the gay porn"
The porn was most likely already on the computer. As soon as you plug it in the Zune will attempt to cram every single piece of compatible media onto itself. I had to restrain mine when it thought it was a good idea to cram over 60 gigs of music and like 20 gigs of porn onto itself. Oh, Zune! :roll:
"The porn was most likely already on the computer. As soon as you plug it in the Zune will attempt to cram every single piece of compatible media onto itself. I had to restrain mine when it thought it was a good idea to cram over 60 gigs of music and like 20 gigs of porn onto itself. Oh, Zune! :roll:"
Wow, like I needed another reason not to get a Zune.
I just think it's hilarious that walmart with its stringent decency policies sold someone some porn! HA Ha ha!
Well, I guess this confirms what I have been thinking all along; most zune users are gay. Now if I see someone with a zune I am gonna look at him funny.
I doubt Microsoft had any thing to do with this.
Wal-Mart is infamous for taking returns and sticking them back on the shelf.
I lost count of how many computers I've had to return to Wal-Mart or Sam's club (Also does this) before deciding you can't trust their electronics to be "New and unused"
Wow, thanks Engadget, I appreciate you bashing the Zune again right after saying the Zune update was awful. (being sarcastic)Although, for some reason, i doubt it can be MSFT's fault, if somebody else put them on there. If somebody left porn on the ipod, it would be Apple's fault? More likely it's walmart not checking their products properly. So lay off with the anti-zune news if you don't like it so much.
This is not new for Walmart. They have a habit of shelving returned items without testing them. I've returned broken items to Walmart to see the exact item back on the shelf the next day, being sold as new. Buying what appears to be previously opened packaging is no different then buying used products off an auction site. If electronic, you may have a product already manufacturer registered to the previous owner. How does this effect your warranty? Walmart needs to get their act together.
Folks, any file that is added to the device has a stamp date, so even Walmart's least competent IT person should be able to decipher the date the file was added to the device. I am not Columbo here, but if added after purchase date, the family added it, otherwise it's Walmart's issue, not Microsoft's.
James here from the ghetto
Wait, did Michael Richardson just find Engadget or something? The bigots are tripping over themselves to defend a couple of the biggest corporations on the planet. Maybe those of you should try applying Ockham's razor instead of coming up with racist speculation based on the mother's fingernails...
Had they just plugged it into the girl's computer, the Zune software would have immediately erased all of the content previously on the Zune and synched it up with her library, if the porn wasn't the girls' in the first place. "No mom, I didn't download that! It was already on there! Honest!"
Well... who ever did it... I wonder if there reading about there own misadventure here on engadget.. ......
that reporter looks like 'robin' on how i met your mother.
Besides, isn't it illegal to sell a product as "new" and charge the same price for it when it was a return?
the dads sensible, the moms over reacting, fer chrissakes what year is it 1480? the girl probably has a gay friend or two
this isn't as odd as it sounds
Can you say "international gay conspiracy"?
Microsoft is not "obligated" to put in a "return to factory defaults" button.
To say that is utterly ridiculous and just a shameless way for a moron like yourself to bash Microsoft... oh I'm sorry, your pentuin toting ass had to say M$.
The unit comes with software that allows you to clear it's contents, Microsoft does not need to do anything more than that. It's Walmarts responsibility to deal with returned items that they plan to resell.
Adding a button like that would just lead to the same IDIOTS like you commenting negatively on Microsoft on articles talking about people who accidentally pressed the "return to factory defaults" button and erased all their stuff.
I don't see what the big deal is -
When I was 5 years old, I was all about gay porn!
At Christmas I purchased a VCR/DVD unit at Walmart that was also previously owned. (The remote wasn't in plastic and the batteries were already installed. The remote was non functioning.) The kicker is that when I went to play a DVD a porn movie popped out of the DVD player. Fortunately none of my kids saw it. I was told by a Walmart lawyer that it is their policy to put items back on the shelf without checking for damage etc. as long as the customer returning the item says it is ok. It is time for Walmart to change their policy. I am beyond mad!
This strikes me as a lot like that Reflectoporn craze that was going around a while back. People selling stuff that had a reflection of them nude in the image of the item. Go Purchase some digital device and then load it with your favorite "diversion" and then return it. People are prolly getting off to the fact that someone is viewing their favorites! When I was in Barnes and Nobles kids section WITH my kids, they have a reading table so you can read a book with your kids to see if they might like the book. On that table was a coffee table book of Robert Maplethorpe photos. I quickly removed it and flagged down an employee. I asked him if this was the type of book that should be in this section of the store. He instantly responded, "Good God NO!". My point is that someone put the book there and watched until they saw a reaction from someone and they got off on that reaction. This is the same thing probably...