Warning: Tears can damage your cell phone
A good friend of mine learned something about the vulnerability of technology this week when her cell phone died after she cried into it.
"You're kidding?!" I said incredulously as my friend Amy told me the reason I couldn't reach her on the phone most of the week. Unlike some of her more effusive phone conversations, the call in question had lasted only around 10 minutes, with maybe five minutes of actual water flow, she said.
Amy knew something was wrong almost immediately--and this time it wasn't her relationship.
"The keypad started to malfunction. I couldn't hit the 'send' button, and that was very sad," she said. The next day the Sprint customer support people told her the phone had water corrosion.
"I was told I had one to two days to get my phone numbers off the (old) phone," said Amy, who hurriedly transferred the data before it was lost. But she wasn't able to save the 150-plus "supersweet" text messages from her boyfriend. That was "truly the worst thing" about the whole ordeal, Amy said.
The phone meltdown "was a big deal," she said, with no small amount of anguish. "It affected several of my jobs and affected my relationship."
But later her boyfriend laughed it off, even joking that he should get her a waterproof cover for her new cell phone.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
