When you need to drop off your tech devices for a repair, how confident are you that they won’t be snooped on?
CBC’s Marketplace took smartphones and laptops to repair stores across Ontario — including large chains Best Buy and Mobile Klinik — and found that in more than half of the documented cases, technicians accessed intimate photos and private information not relevant to the repair.
Marketplace dropped off devices at 20 stores, ranging from small independent shops to medium-sized chains to larger national chains, after installing monitoring software on the devices. In total, 16 stores were recorded. (At four stores, the tracking software didn’t log anything, or the stores didn’t appear to turn the devices on.)
Technicians at nine stores accessed private data, including one technician who not only viewed photos but copied them onto a USB key.
as a technician myself, I hate this. I truly don’t understand why any tech would ever do any snooping. I fix dozens of devices a day, I need the password so I can test the new part and make sure everything is working as it should be after the repair. I’m far to busy and apathetic to give a shit what people have on their devices.
side note, for those of y’all with Samsung phones, there’s a maintenance mode that will allow the tech to test everything after the repair but not access any data on your device.
How would I go about putting my device in maintenance mode? Iirc that was only available for repairs at Samsung Authorized stores?
Settings -> Battery & Device Care -> Maintenance Mode
I truly don’t understand why any tech would ever do any snooping.
You don’t understand that some people are just dirt bags?
Unsurprising. Most repair shops will ask for your PW to “test that the device works”. If it is for a battery change, or screen fix or whatnot, refuse to give it! It is not required. They can confirm the fix just by accessing the lock screen itself.
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A lot of times, the camera/earpiece speaker/microphone cables are really fragile and tolerances are tight. The phone isn’t designed to be opened. You should, therefore, make sure they work after the repair by making a test call.
I have never - ever - dropped a device off anywhere.
I have spent hours and hours learning new skills, trouble shooting, and engaging in forums with people who know better than me.
But just drop it off? Never.
Wait wait.
I dropped off my ps2 to get modded.
This is why we need a guarantee that tech workers are asexual before dropping off our devices for repair
And perhaps some kind of alarm to alert when a sexual person is in the repair area.
(Debatably) hot, single, tech support near you!
Two out of three’s not bad.
You could always have a lie detector added into the process to ensure they didn’t look. Though for some reason I think that may be a better fit for someone like a mechanic over tech repair.
lie detectors are themselves lies anyway lol.
just clench your anus, breathe in and breathe out before every answer.
Haha holy shit, the Canada Computers statement that photos weren’t accessed inappropriately & that the employee in question was disciplined, shortly followed by a picture of the technician outright copying only these files to the USB drive. These people are scum
This is why I won’t repair any device I can’t fix myself (which unfortunately is most of them, I’m not very tech literate).
I’ve been in tech since 2007 and people are stupid and sometimes they leave “private” photos on the damn desktop. No offense to end users but don’t leave your pornos out in the open…buy two USB drives and back it up to both and store in a closet or something. The end user is also at fault here imo. Many times IT people aren’t looking for shit but people are stupid enough to leave it right in the open.
Why are you clicking and opening people’s image or video files even if they’re right on their desktop? I doubt that’s part of the repair troubleshooting you are supposed to be doing. You shouldn’t be clicking on their images or videos even if they are easily accessible.
This being so common is creepy, but I feel like I just read/heard about a case where some pedo was recently arrested because a tech found CSAM on his phone during a repair and reported him. I really value privacy, but in that one case I’m glad the tech got nosey. I’m a bit intoxicated right now and cannot remember where I heard about this, but probably some true crime podcast or YouTube channel. I’ll update with a source if I remember.
EDIT here’s one, but there are dozens of cases like this if you search https://kmph.com/news/local/tech-repair-shop-helps-arrest-customer-possessing-child-pornography-in-fresno
The thing is, it’s really hard to be consistent on beliefs, especially in cases like this where it might sound unfavorable.
If you say you’re against surveillance and spying on devices, people will generally agree that’s a good thing. But this is an example of privacy invasion, and is justified because they caught CSAM, so it must be good, right?
Well in the big picture of things, this would be setting a precedent. Where they can justify these things because they can find and stop these things. This tends to lead to the “think of the children!” fallacy. Legislators are actively using this argument to push anti-privacy measures like breaking encryption so they can stop this. So it unfortunately means, respect privacy, or allow these things to go unchecked.
Freedom comes at a price, and you gotta stay consistent even if it lets bad guys get away with things. You can justify a lot of fascism in the name of stopping the bad guys, since obviously it’s not a good look to defend those actions.
It’s one thing to merely stumble across someone’s private content on a PC while working on it, and quite another to actively seek it out and make a copy like the guys in the article were caught doing.
Thank you! I worked at Staples as an Easy Tech (2006) and we were required to search desktops for pedophile materials so we could report them to authorities when found. I never found any myself but that was policy back then.
