We caught technicians at Best Buy, Mobile Klinik, Canada Computers and others snooping on our personal devices
We caught technicians at Best Buy, Mobile Klinik, Canada Computers and others snooping on our personal devices
Of course you did. You're not handing your device over to Best Buy, you're handing it over to Jimmy on the Geek Squad who is quiet and a bit weird. And he loves to snoop into other people's phones. Not for identity theft or reselling naughty pictures, but simply for the fun of snooping on other people.
Backup your device and wipe all of your data before handing a phone over to anyone else. It's just safer that way.
Tbf, most of the people who are going to best buy to have their device serviced aren’t going to know how to back up and wipe it
I had the entire 4 man crew go on and on about how LaCie La Porsche hard dive enclosures (they were HDDs) were not accessible. They claimed every single one they took apart, was DOA. I was like um neat.
Went home. Pried it apart. Salvaged the completely stock Seagate HDD and tossed the shitty enclosure.
So yeah, Geek Squad competency is… not high.
Also the device is in a condition that makes this difficult like not turning on or the screen being broken.
Time for them to learn.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Jimmy who is quiet and weird. I worked at a Verizon store. Brayden the kind, tall, outgoing handsome guy with a nice smile is worse. He would ask girls, moms, grandmas even to to unlock their phone and then immediately take them in the back to search for nudes. As you said, back up your phone and wipe it before it’s ever in anyone else’s hands.
Kinda hard to do that if it won't turn on, though.
Permanently Deleted
With a USB cable and your phone manufactures backup software installed on your computer, as recommended by your manufacturer?
But seriously, this may not always be an option. And you have to decide if you want to risk giving it to Jimmy in that state. But keep in mind that you do, Jimmy is taking a copy of those bikini pics. And you probably don't want to know what he plans to do with them.
Oh man, if only there was some way to answer that question using the exact thing you typed.
https://www.androidauthority.com/extract-data-broken-android-phone-819324/
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00079132/Or by changing it to "iphone" specific.
https://www.mobikin.com/idevice/backup-iphone-with-broken-screen.html
https://www.imyfone.com/iphone-tips/how-to-backup-iphone-if-screen-is-broken/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253014375You don't. You back things up before they break. Then when they break, you have backups for recovery.
Just stating the obvious, in a vain hope that it would get someone to start, improve, or test, or even just think about their backups.
Having USB debugging on with your computer authorised, so that you can scrcpy into it. I think this is a viable solution.
The other one is buying a device durable enough to not break display and touch, and putting a good armour case and screen protector on it. Even if the display were to crack, atleast you could give some input to get it connected to computer.
Worked in phone repair for ten years with a wide range of people.
I agree with everything you said.
Absolutely not surprised. I've had multiple friends that worked Geek Squad. All of them have admitted to snooping at least once and most have said their coworkers did it constantly.
Don't take your computer to Geek Squad, folks. They're all untrained highschoolers following a script anyways
FBI offers a bounty to technicians who report incriminating evidence, so yeah, when you take your repair tickes to a large service, you can expect this.
Local services depend on word of mouth so they might be more respectful, but only because they are incentivized to not let rumors of their snooping get out.
Still, surveillance staff routinely pass saucy and gross pics all over their office and we only hope they don't dump them on the internet like high-school students
This was in Canada, where snooping like this is illegal.
I hope in Canada law enforcement cares more about following the rules than it does in the US.
Louis Rossmann video here we come!
Seriously he's right, the only stories you ever hear about this are from big repair places.
Apple did the same to a customer's sex tapes on their iPhone. But iPhone is very secure... just not against USA corporations and 3 letter clowns.
This is why its crucial to ensure you at least have good encryption and a strong password on your device, and maybe should just reset it entirely to be extra safe, before you send it off for repair like this. Pretty scary to think about what could happen.
u r dumb enough to let someone take advantage of your naivety in some topic out there, tech nerd.
that's just how shit works, remember it.
Just another reason to hate Canada. /s