MARION -- A bizarre Christmas gift mix-up brought a Marion 12-year-old more than she had on her wish list. It was not exactly a lump of coal, but a set of southern Illinois parents may have preferred that to the gift they gave their daughter.
The young girl opened her gift and got an eyeful of porn. They bought what they thought were Coby Kyros pads for their 12 and 15-year-old daughters. They are similar to the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle. Within a couple minutes, they realized one of the devices had more than just games and email apps.
"She touched it once to switch screens, and all of a sudden something that shouldn't have been there came up," Jay Hardin, of Marion, said.
What she saw were two applications already installed on the touch pads. One called "Boobs! Butts! Babes!;" the other called "Undress Me." His daughter now refers to her Kyros as the PervPad.
"I actually thought she was kidding me," Hardin said. "I walked in there and I looked at the screen of this thing and, sure enough, there were some things on there that should not have been on there for any kid."
Hardin says he quickly took the new touch pad computers from both his daughters and put them back in the box. He says his daughters did not even have them long enough to connect to the internet.
On Monday, he called the manufacturer, but did not get the response he was hoping for from a customer service manager.
"Apparently, they have adult content in their application library as part of each and every one of these things that they sell," Hardin said. "That's what we were told."
Coby executives had a different answer for News 3.
"There is nothing pre-programmed from Coby," Senior Product Manager Michael Paladino said in a written statement. "Like any other internet device with an open platform, a wide range of content is available which may require parental oversight. Coby is always looking for ways to improve our offerings."
Hardin is certain the original package seals were still intact when he bought the Kyros pads. He says the software never should have been on the tablet in the first place.
"I don't expect, however, when HP or Macintosh or somebody else sells me a laptop computer that I am going to open it up, turn it on, and find a bunch of adult icons on it," Hardin said.
The company does not know how the applications ended up installed on one of the Kyros pads the Hardins bought. One thought is that someone bought the device before the Hardins, downloaded a few extra apps, and returned it to the store.
News 3 called the store where the Hardins bought the device. Store managers say they say they have not had any other problems.
The Hardin's second Kyros did not appear to have the same adult content apps installed. The Hardin family plans on exchanging the infected Kyros with a brand new one.
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