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We caught technicians snooping on our personal devices
- graypegg 3y agoMost desktop OSes have some sort of auto-destructing "Guest" user you can enable, it really should be standard on mobile devices as well.
- userbinator 3y agoIt's not surprising, but I wonder if this is a form of hit piece from the anti-right-to-repair movement against third-party repair shops.
- bell-cot 3y agoFrom a quick skim - the article only has n=1 data on 1st-party repair. So it's difficult to draw any "you can trust 1st-party repair" conclusions. Vs. a "don't trust repair, just replace it" conclusion...
- malexw 3y agoCBC is the public broadcaster in Canada, and Marketplace specifically has a good record of consumer-oriented investigative journalism like this. You might be familiar with another report a few years ago from them that found that Subway chicken may contain as much as 50% soy filler: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-chicken-fast-food-1.3993967 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-chicken-fast-fo... I'm personally more likely to trust Marketplace than not.
- VancouverMan 3y agoWhile caution is needed with all media, more caution than usual should be used with anything coming out of CBC, especially recently. In January 2022, for example, a long-time former journalist with CBC discussed some objectivity and quality concerns: https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/speaking-freely https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/speaking-freely Among the mainstream news organizations in Canada, CBC is, in my opinion and experience, the least-trustworthy and lowest-quality of them.
- mthoms 3y agoElsewhere on this site, you proclaimed to be a libertarian opposed to almost any and all government-related functions. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but... I suspect that probably colours your opinion somewhat? If you've got data or research that supports your argument that the CBC is, as a whole, deserving of such low quality and trust, I'm genuinely interested to hear it. Otherwise, it just reads as ideological opposition as opposed to genuine criticism. FYI, your source now contributes to the Daily Mail and Fox News. By her own admission she is staunchly against the "woke" agenda (whatever that is). Here's an interview with her that balances out your provided link - https://www.canadaland.com/tara-henley-cbc/ https://www.canadaland.com/tara-henley-cbc/
- JohnFen 3y agoWould anyone really expect that authorized repair shops are any different in this regard?
- bell-cot 3y agoUm...yes? Easy & enticing opportunity for generally young & low-paid workers, ~zero enforcement, and the crime is both ~invisible to the victims and nicely into the "just don't want to think about it" zone. What would you expect?
- DangitBobby 3y agoI expect people not to be pieces of shit.
- bell-cot 3y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/expect#Verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/expect#Verb Definition #1 vs. definition #2.
- chankstein38 3y agoThey're kids for the most part. I worked for Geek Squad when I was under 20 and saw this kind of stuff all of the time from similar-aged coworkers. I hear you that you expect better but when you hire people who were (or still are) teens and pay people just above minimum wage you can't really expect to get professionals.
- DangitBobby 3y agoI'm considering it from more of a social perspective. It is socially unacceptable for someone to snoop through someone else's personal photos. Many young children would understand this, and teens certainly do.
- chankstein38 3y agoFair, it's definitely fair to expect better from a company. I guess I just have no faith in corporations anymore.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ricardobeat 3y agoProviding your password to a technician under any circumstances is a terrible idea to start with. Depending on how careless you are[1] they might gain access to your email, social media, bank accounts and all kinds of personal, legal and financial documents. Pictures are the least of your concerns. The only safe way to do this is to 1) be present during service if it’s a software issue, 2) backup your data somewhere else, and wipe the device clean before handing it in. [1] safe to assume that people who take their laptops to service shops know _nothing_ about security
- Someone1234 3y agoIf the device is nonfunctional, and has encryption enabled (e.g. Bitlocker or FileVault) you MUST give them your password if you want it repaired and cannot afford to lose data. That is the COMMON CASE. A lot of shops/businesses aren't going to agree to a "stand over my shoulder while I work" clause least of all because your repair goes into a backlog until they can get to it. > backup your data somewhere else, and wipe the device clean before handing it in. Well over half the devices going in for repair cannot do that, that's why they're going in for repair. > safe to assume that people who take their laptops to service shops know _nothing_ about security Safe to assume that the people being judgmental online know nothing about the technical expertise of the average device owner. I'd never take a device into somewhere with personal/sensitive information on it, but I recognize I am in an extremely privileged position in having the knowledge and expertise to do so. Even a fully broken screen wouldn't stop me from backing up/wiping. That isn't typical at all.
- sixothree 3y ago>If the device is nonfunctional, and has encryption enabled (e.g. Bitlocker or FileVault) you MUST give them your password if you want it repaired and cannot afford to lose data. That needs to change. We create two user accounts for all of the laptops we give out. Someone working on the device only needs to have access to one of the accounts. Windows is still too stupid to hide user data from other users. But at least it's something.
- Qem 3y ago
- Beijinger 3y ago[flagged]
- Someone1234 3y agoIn Canada copying some of those intimate photos might currently be illegal: https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/revenge-porn-laws-across-the-world#_Toc511943110 https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/revenge-porn-...
- spandextwins 3y agoAs system admins we have access to everything. Passwords are a programming construct.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoThat's what encryption is for.
- spandextwins 3y agoYou’d think. Who’s got the keys? The system admins.
- ericfrazier 3y agoLike the creeps at the photo development shops of yore.
- Mistletoe 3y agoI would never have someone repair my computer, but if I did I would certainly not give it to them with intimate photos or sensitive information on it, for exactly this reason.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThe anti-right-to-repair crowd lost this argument with me when Samsung decided that I needed a copy of TikTok on my phone without asking me. It turns out those personal devices are not so private, in general.
- FloatArtifact 3y agoWell, I agree there are major ethical concerns about this topic. You're going to have to trust your technician with your data to some degree. If you don't, don't keep it on your personal device but on an external or have it encrypted. If a user comes in with a virus I would expect the technician to explain in educate where the virus came from. That would involve browser history and downloads. If a technician worked on my device I would expect them to back it up in case of data loss. That data should be held until the end user is satisfied, then securely deleted.
- lallysingh 3y agoThis is a great use case to make home dirs separately mounted encrypted FSs. Or, a tool that encrypts the user's primary homedir for "service mode."
- bsder 3y agoHere's the problem: anything which can lock someone else out can also lock me out. The average person is WAY more in danger of getting locked out than needing to protect against a theft or attack.
- jodrellblank 3y ago> ""These results are frightening," said Hassan Khan, associate professor in the school of computer science at the University of Guelph. "It's looking through information, searching for data on users' devices, copying data off the device.... it's as bad as it gets."" "It's as bad as it gets", he says, uploading his photos with GPS location data to iCloud, sync'ing his browser history to Microsoft, using keylogger-as-a-service Grammarly to write his article, having his online shopping history emailed to his GMail full of itemised shopping details and delivery addresses, leaving Google services to gather his GPS location in realtime on his trip home for live traffic data updates. "Those are personal photos!" he uploads to Facebook alongside an innocent group picture taken earlier, which Facebook does face recognition on and matches the people in the photo against the contacts list it stole from his phone. His drive home picked up on numberplate recognition cameras, and on neighbour's Ring doorbells. His phone scans the surrounding wifi SSIDs and reports them back to HQ. He enters the front door - "I had the weirdest experience just now", says his partner, "I got an advert on my laptop for something I was talking about with a friend, do you think Alexa or Facebook listen in to our conversations?". "I've been told that can't happen" he says, sitting down at his computer, which prompts him again to login with a Microsoft cloud account, then freezes momentarily as "Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry" takes all the available CPU. "Millions of personal details leaked from 23andMe" he saw in the news headlines[1]. An email arrives from a shop he walked past earlier which picked up his phone's bluetooth ID. His Kindle idles on the table, sending details of every book, every page turn, every passage highlighted, every note made. His car uploading the latest route and tracking data back to the manufacturer. His cloud password vault slowly leaking[2]. "The worst thing in the world would be if someone found out we were naked under our clothes" they both said in unison. "That's as bad as it gets". "Or if someone knew we went on holiday", she said. "Or had a bank account", he said. ---- Each of these companies told Marketplace in separate email statements that they are committed to protecting customers' privacy.". Yes, tech companies say that too. This article is a reminder that if we don't red-team, smoke-test, trial run, our business policies and regulations, we end up with words about how great they are while they aren't functioning or aren't existing. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/7/23907330/23andme-leak-hackers-selling-user-dna-data https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/7/23907330/23andme-leak-hac... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lastpass+hacked+again&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lastpass+hacked+again&ia=we...
- motohagiography 3y agoThis is a broken culture problem as it's extremely perverse for technicians to do this. It degrades technologists in general as a trade and profession and it reinforces negative class stereotypes about people in service jobs. However, it does imply a business case for a tech quartermaster service for families who can afford it.
- UberFly 3y agoThey all snoop. All of them. It's delusional to think they don't.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- barrysteve 3y agoYou ever get the feeling authorities are laughing at the guy's holding their phones? I do. All the time.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoThis piece is pretty sensationalist but obviously there's some wrongs being done. I wish they'd be more specific about "devices" being mobile phones or desktop/laptops.... And then it's like, what do you expect? You're giving them your device with full access to troubleshoot problems, they're going to look around in the process. And in many cases of course there's some kind of NDA 'assumed'. The copying instances and what not are violations no question, but again, you're giving them full access. I'm not sure a good chunk of the 'my device needs fixing' public cares about this. As long as their device gets fixed and stuff isn't obviously, like, shared out.
- ale42 3y agoWould this be equivalent to say e.g. that if you upload your photos to Google Photos, you should assume that their employees can freely watch them, as long as they are not sharing them?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoNot exactly, I'm saying the repair aspect implies a certain degree of access
- danudey 3y agoBut the repair aspect does not imply technicians browsing through unrelated files out of curiosity. You simply cannot blame the user for the technician's unwillingness to respect the user's privacy.
- petesergeant 3y ago> This piece is pretty sensationalist That wasn't my read at all -- which bits specifically?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoFairplay, I'm revisiting the article because I also heard radio news reports on this earlier and it was like really freaking out, clips of the Privacy Commissioner's quote etc. The sting operation they set in play seemed like really trapping the employees when in 8/10 cases they were probably just trying ot figure out what the problem was on the machines? USB and wifi disabled? but what issues did they report to the stores when submitting the cases?
- msie 3y agoI hated my old iMac because it went dead and I couldn't just remove the hard drive and hand the device in for repair (because the hd is only accessible by taking the device apart).
- bschwindHN 3y agoWe need asexual computer repair personnel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9I04Oa-hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9I04Oa-hU
- teunispeters 3y agoComputer techs are very underpaid in Canada. One place I got paid around $30/week.... that was in the 1990s though. (the coworkers were awesome but the employer was abusive as all anything) I've worked at a few places since though and wouldn't recommend that work to my worst enemy. Better pay and hours in fast food, and less customer abuse typically. One of the things rarely mentioned is that there's two people who get blamed when tech fails - the user themselves, and the tech who comes in to fix it. Not a great recipe for happy encounters or healthy cultures.
- sslayer 3y agoAre you implying that we cant expect moral/ethical behavior because of the pay rate?
- teunispeters 3y agoyes. Same goes for a lot of other fields, eg airport security. Now one of the shops I worked in was very deep in moral/ethical responsibility but it seems an outlier. The reason I say yes is partially due to morals/ethics having something of a cost. Low paid people aren't paid well enough to mitigate the cruelty or rudeness they're often treated with.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> One place I got paid around $30/week.... that was in the 1990s though. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/ https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculat... says that $30 in 1999 is $50.80 in 2023. That doesn't sound underpaid to me.
- rrobukef 3y agoMinimum wage in canada in '99 was +-9$. Did he work 6 hours per week at 50% tax burden?
- teunispeters 3y ago
- bloomingeek 3y agoBack in the 90's, many of my co-workers would bring me their computers for various reasons, mostly viral because Win 95 and XP were, well you know. Some would tell me they had teenage boys who may have gone to porn sites and they were afraid that's how they were infected. I would tell them to please get their personal stuff off the machine, because I would be looking for anything out of order. I explained I may have to reinstall windows and I didn't want them to lose their files. They never would! So I would burn their stuff to CD-ROM and then reload it all and give them the CDs. I was a friend, not a business. If we expect businesses to be decent or prudent with what's on our devices we are naive. Get your stuff off first, then bring in the device! Human nature is always unpredictable.
- zephrx1111 3y ago> Human nature is always unpredictable. Human nature is always -un-predictable.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoI went to bestbuy recently for my kid's laptop with issues but still under warranty. The employee asked for a password but my kid is connected with his Microsoft account. I created a 'bestbuy' account on the spot with some classic luggage pin because the employee had no idea what to do. I guess that if my kid went alone, he would have given the ms account password and the employee would have been able to access everything on that account.
- Fervicus 3y agoI found it very odd that the article needed to show 2 sets of these "private" pics (3 including the video) and focus so much on the models. Sad state of journalism.
- f233f2 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- theropost 3y agoI wonder if this systemic thing happens at Microsoft OneDrive, or Google, or the other cloud storage providers. I notice lately most of these apps tend to expect t download pictures/data from our devices, with obscure options to shut these "automatic" functions off. It would be a very interesting investigation/audit of such companies.
- chidi0202 3y ago[dead]
- olyjohn 3y agoIn other news, every field where you have to pay someone to fix your shit requires a level of trust! You have to trust that your mechanic isnt going to make up some bogus shit to extract money from you. You have to trust your plumber isn't making up bullshit and overcharging you. You have to trust your doctor to not prescribe you unnecessary drugs. And your dentist to not toss in a few extra fillings. Turns out you also have to trust your computer repair guy to not snoop on your shit.
- Anita87 3y ago[flagged]
- ddmf 3y agoBack in the day - 1998 to 2003 - if we were backing up data for a rebuild, we'd check for mp3s and pirated movies, it'd be obvious when copying the data back to the users computer. The music just got added to the technician room playlist.