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5-year-old finds porn on refurbed Nintendo 3DS at Christmas

One five-year-old found indecent images on his refurbished Nintendo 3DS on Christmas morning.

Joe Svetlik Reporter
Joe has been writing about consumer tech for nearly seven years now, but his liking for all things shiny goes back to the Gameboy he received aged eight (and that he still plays on at family gatherings, much to the annoyance of his parents). His pride and joy is an Infocus projector, whose 80-inch picture elevates movie nights to a whole new level.
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Joe Svetlik
2 min read

Well this isn't what you need Christmas morning. Imagine buying a young relative a handheld games console to keep them occupied, only for them to find it filled with indecent images. That's exactly what happened to one Colorado father.

Mark Giles bought a refurbished Nintendo 3DS for his five-year-old son Braydon to unwrap Christmas morning. But when the nipper fired up the refurbished console, he found someone had left pornographic images on it.

Braydon showed what he'd found to his brother Bryton, asking for help how to remove them. Bryton told Kusa NBC 9 News: "He said that he didn't take these pictures so I went over to these pictures and I see two people in bed. I told my dad and I said dad this has porn on it and he got up and went right to the phone."

Mark Giles called GameStop -- where he'd bought the refurbished console -- and the store said the images must have been left by a previous owner. It released a statement saying it was "currently researching" the situation.

"We have a rigorous quality control process in place to ensure that existing content is removed from all devices before they are re-sold," it said. "Out of millions of transactions each year, ones like this happen very rarely. Our number one priority is to make this right for our customer."

Mark Giles is understandably upset at what his son saw. "You can't un-see this," he told 9 News. "He's five years old. Maybe when he's 18 or 20 maybe he won't know anything about it but he's not going to forget about it tomorrow."

Just goes to show the perils of buying refurbished gadgets, I suppose. Anything sold as refurbed is supposed to be completely wiped, so if you do find anything suspect on there, you're more than within your rights to complain.

Have you ever bought anything refurbished? What's been your experience? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.