A 5-year-old received a surprising -- and eye-opening -- Christmas gift. Braydon Giles got a refurbished Nintendo 3DS filled with porn -- its memory hadn't been wiped clean after being sold to a GameStop in Colorado for resale.
After Brandon turned on the 3DS, he found nine pornographic images of two people in bed. He asked his brother to erase them.
"He said that he didn't take these pictures so I went over to these pictures and I see two people in a bed," said brother Bryton Giles. "I told my dad and I said, 'Dad this has porn on it,' and he got up and went right to the phone."
Father Mark Giles called the GameStop to complain. GameStop apologized and offered to replace the 3DS.
"GameStop is currently researching this situation," said the company in a statement. "We have a rigorous quality control process in place to ensure that existing content is removed from all devices before they are re-sold. 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."
But Mark doesn't think that makes up for the transgression.
"You can't unsee this," he said. "He's 5 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 this tomorrow."
The built-in camera of the 3DS is low quality, so budding auteurs might want to take their naughty photos with a better camera, and transfer them to the 3DS for portability. Of course, a smartphone would be easier, more secure and less likely to be mistaken for a child's toy.
And parents should probably check through the memory of any refurbished products they buy before handing them over to their impressionable children, unless they're comfortable explaining the birds and the bees.