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I had this experience at an Apple authorised repair center (ie. not Apple Store but a shop that is partner with Apple): they almost forced me to give the passwo

I had this experience at an Apple authorised repair center (ie. not Apple Store but a shop that is partner with Apple): they almost forced me to give the password of my Mac, even after I argued that we set up security/Filevault explicitly to protect data and it would be stupid to give the password to anyone after that... They argued that when they change the component (battery problem), they have to test that everything works fine. I found that really shady! At the Apple Store, they also asked for the password, but when I said no way, the support person was just "ok, no problem".

clintonb 5y ago
I had a similar experience with a battery replacement. I declined to share the password, and the owner claims he was able to run the battery diagnostics without the password.
- drclau 5y ago
  I believe they can boot up from an external device, or over network, and run the tests. There's absolutely no reason to give them your password. I went through a battery replacement (out of warranty, but still covered by Apple), and I was never asked for the password. But maybe they didn't even bother to run tests, since it was literally pushing the keyboard up ever so slightly, the touch pad wouldn't click anymore (haptic feedback very weak) and the bottom plate was bulging out. It was pretty obvious what is up. The nice thing tho, I ended up with a new battery, new keyboard, new touchpad and new bottom plate. I guess every (most?) cloud has a silver lining? :)
bussierem 5y ago
>At the Apple Store, they also asked for the password, but when I said no way, the support person was just "ok, no problem". Can we take a moment to realize how crazy this is? I'm glad they didn't fight you, but the fact that they didn't means that they know in an instant that _they never needed the password in the first place to do what you asked them to_. This means that them asking for the password is them asking you for the private key to your entire personal life for no other reason than "most people will give it to them".
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  It could mean that they just won't do as much testing if they don't know the password, which means there's a greater risk you'll get your computer back and discover there's still something wrong with it. Which might also be a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, but there's nothing inherently nefarious about it. And people can make different choices depending on the amount of private information on their laptop.
  - onedognight 5y ago
    They NetBoot in order to run diagnostics. They don’t need your password.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Automated tests don't catch everything.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      The article is about someone's iphone being repaired - surely you can't netboot a locked iphone?
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        It should still be able to run diagnostics.
  - patwolf 5y ago
    I once refused to give my MBP password to the technician at the Apple store for some hardware repair, and he said that they just wouldn't be able to verify the repair completely. I'm not sure how true that was, but it did catch me off guard that they would even ask for a password.
- volkl48 5y ago
  Having done this kind of support before (mixed hardware + software), a large number of people present their computer with multiple vague problems that can very well be a set of issues with both the actual physical hardware AND with whatever they have done to their actual user account on their operating system. Most want all their problems fixed with as little action required on their part as possible, with as much certainty as possible, and do not care about security in the least. People are hard to reach once they are out of your sight, and get very unpleasant when things take a while....even when they take a while largely because they didn't get back to you in a timely manner (because you turn out to actually need their password to troubleshoot their configuration). "Wipe the device and start fresh" is understandably not a valid solution to most users (especially as anything other than last-resort), even though it'll rule out a large portion of potential software problems. --------- To note on some other elements I see in this thread: - Hardware diagnostics exist in some form on most devices. They do not catch every problem that exists, and are often especially bad with more intermittent issues. If the complaint is that Facetime drops out after 10 minutes, the most certain you can be that the issue is resolved is by running those diagnostics AND booting to their actual user account and having Facetime work for 15 minutes. No one cares that "it passed the Camera diagnostic" when they've still got a problem when they get home with their "fixed" device. Many people actively want you to be signed into their account and do exactly what they did to confirm the issue no longer happens. - IIRC you can't actually boot a modern (T2) Mac to an external drive without an Admin password being entered at least once to change the Startup Security Utility settings. - Whether being run as a business or as internal support in an organization (more so a college or the like with personally owned devices), time matters. Getting credentials from everyone who's willing regardless of if they turn out to be necessary is absolutely terrible security practice, but great for turning around repairs more quickly and with fewer repeats of devices coming back because the issue isn't fixed. -------- tl;dr - Sensible security practices are at odds with everything else the average person wants from their computer repairs.

clintonb 5y ago

I had a similar experience with a battery replacement. I declined to share the password, and the owner claims he was able to run the battery diagnostics without the password.

drclau 5y ago
I believe they can boot up from an external device, or over network, and run the tests. There's absolutely no reason to give them your password. I went through a battery replacement (out of warranty, but still covered by Apple), and I was never asked for the password. But maybe they didn't even bother to run tests, since it was literally pushing the keyboard up ever so slightly, the touch pad wouldn't click anymore (haptic feedback very weak) and the bottom plate was bulging out. It was pretty obvious what is up. The nice thing tho, I ended up with a new battery, new keyboard, new touchpad and new bottom plate. I guess every (most?) cloud has a silver lining? :)

bussierem 5y ago

>At the Apple Store, they also asked for the password, but when I said no way, the support person was just "ok, no problem". Can we take a moment to realize how crazy this is? I'm glad they didn't fight you, but the fact that they didn't means that they know in an instant that _they never needed the password in the first place to do what you asked them to_. This means that them asking for the password is them asking you for the private key to your entire personal life for no other reason than "most people will give it to them".

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
It could mean that they just won't do as much testing if they don't know the password, which means there's a greater risk you'll get your computer back and discover there's still something wrong with it. Which might also be a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, but there's nothing inherently nefarious about it. And people can make different choices depending on the amount of private information on their laptop.
- onedognight 5y ago
  They NetBoot in order to run diagnostics. They don’t need your password.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Automated tests don't catch everything.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    The article is about someone's iphone being repaired - surely you can't netboot a locked iphone?
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      It should still be able to run diagnostics.
- patwolf 5y ago
  I once refused to give my MBP password to the technician at the Apple store for some hardware repair, and he said that they just wouldn't be able to verify the repair completely. I'm not sure how true that was, but it did catch me off guard that they would even ask for a password.
volkl48 5y ago
Having done this kind of support before (mixed hardware + software), a large number of people present their computer with multiple vague problems that can very well be a set of issues with both the actual physical hardware AND with whatever they have done to their actual user account on their operating system. Most want all their problems fixed with as little action required on their part as possible, with as much certainty as possible, and do not care about security in the least. People are hard to reach once they are out of your sight, and get very unpleasant when things take a while....even when they take a while largely because they didn't get back to you in a timely manner (because you turn out to actually need their password to troubleshoot their configuration). "Wipe the device and start fresh" is understandably not a valid solution to most users (especially as anything other than last-resort), even though it'll rule out a large portion of potential software problems. --------- To note on some other elements I see in this thread: - Hardware diagnostics exist in some form on most devices. They do not catch every problem that exists, and are often especially bad with more intermittent issues. If the complaint is that Facetime drops out after 10 minutes, the most certain you can be that the issue is resolved is by running those diagnostics AND booting to their actual user account and having Facetime work for 15 minutes. No one cares that "it passed the Camera diagnostic" when they've still got a problem when they get home with their "fixed" device. Many people actively want you to be signed into their account and do exactly what they did to confirm the issue no longer happens. - IIRC you can't actually boot a modern (T2) Mac to an external drive without an Admin password being entered at least once to change the Startup Security Utility settings. - Whether being run as a business or as internal support in an organization (more so a college or the like with personally owned devices), time matters. Getting credentials from everyone who's willing regardless of if they turn out to be necessary is absolutely terrible security practice, but great for turning around repairs more quickly and with fewer repeats of devices coming back because the issue isn't fixed. -------- tl;dr - Sensible security practices are at odds with everything else the average person wants from their computer repairs.