Secret US military files found on MP3 player

A digital music player bought in a junk shop held dozens of confidential US military files including names and phone numbers of soldiers.

Up 60 files contained personal details, including those who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The MP3 player was bought in Oklahoma by a New Zealand tourist who only discovered the files when he got home and plugged it into his computer.

Similar breaches occurred in Afghanistan in 2006, with stolen USB flash drives that contained sensitive military data on sale in shops outside a main US base in Bagram.

In the latest case private information about troops included their Social Security numbers and even which female troops were pregnant.

Details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan and a mission briefing were also found on some files, according to a New Zealand TV station that broke the story, displaying names like “Bagram,” a main U.S. base in Afghanistan, from the files on screen.

Some of the files included a warning that the release of their contents was “prohibited by federal law.”