Saw this on engadget.. Sky news has done an article in which they took a laptop with a keylogger and camera to various "repair" shops... makes for some interesting watching.. not at all surprising in the small shops.. but the bigger brands, whilst I think of them as scum as par for the course... didn't think they were *that* bad. Watch!
The smaller shops were the only ones guilty of criminal acts, the brand stores were 'just' guilty of imcompetence, I mean loose fecking RAM, how basic a problem. There are no problems that a PC repair shop can perform, that couldn't be done by an enthusiast, with no formal training.
That shop should be closed down and the people sent to the bottom of the sea. I can understand PC World overcharging, as most of their technical services are overpriced, good that they offered a refund though and didn't deny anything.
I've heard from friends that work at Best Buy that it's pretty much policy for them to copy any interesting files on your PC for themselves. Is the word pikey considered pejorative?
I have all my relatives come to me with issues, as I have always felt the repair shops in and around Dublin ripped the piss and overcharged. Stuff like that just justifies my gut feelings.
And this folks, is why you have a friend that you trust who knows just about everything, so you dont go thru this... that one shop should be closed
Geek Squad (if you can call them that) does that "to protect your data", but yeah, its bull, they're just snooping. Took a computer there to get something fixed when i was a noob on computers and all that, and they didnt even know what was wrong.
All my friends at school come to me instead of the IT dept. just because I'll be quicker. This kind of thing though is so wrong, well done to sky for bringing it to people's attention. Some people should not be allowed anywhere near a computer.
This my friends, is one of the reasons why the days of actual hardware ownership is over. The future is cloud-based delivered over dumb terminals, once they break, you throw them away. People will trust, the brand power of household names, to an extent that they will never trust local shops. Whether the buying public would be any safer, is open to debate, given the current level of corporate governance. -- I hope that I'm way off on this one, I love to tinker y'all.
Years ago, when I did a secondary school two-week "work experience" thing in a computer shop, I was told to fix a Windows PC which wouldn't boot into the OS anymore. I managed to boot into it, and found a shitload of porn dialers on the desktop (obviously, his PC failed to boot into the OS because of some, probably several, malware programs). I didn't tell anyone in the shop, nor did I tell the guy - when he picked up his fixed PC - to go have fun! with it, no matter how much I wanted to. I believe that in every job's there's some professional integrity. As a PC technician/repairman, (most of the time) you don't need to look at your customer's files. I'm glad that the news story named names. If I held the same work ethic (better: lack of work ethic) as these idiots in my current (non-tech) job, that would be very, very bad; and I'd be so fired the second anyone found out.
Not in the uk though, we are too far away from having internet connections that are usable for it. The video just goes to proof that you should not have too much private stuff on the hdd in your computer, nas Cheesecake, they wont find anything that way.
Seen the guys at work sifting through peoples private folders. Never gone and saved anything, or looked for passwords, as far as I can tell anyway.
I knew a guy who worked for PC World. It was a standard thing for techies to have their own USB drives and down load folks music and stuff. BTW it was PC world who dropped Gary Glitter in it. While it was out of order that gary was a peado. What the hell were they doing snooping around his PC and opening all the folders.......
When I was managing my team at IBM I made each of the an 8 x 10 plaque to hang on their wall. We were all working in virtual offices(at home). The plaque said: Integrity means being good even when no one is watching Hardest part of my job was to get them to log off and get on with life. IBM never lost a dime on my contract. Plus rep to Imperium. john
Thank god I have a good computer shop around here it's a local guy, who unlike best buy... will do small things for free (that's right free, a concept best buy doesn't get) or he'll do the repair in front of you (hard to look at your files when you're standing right there)
News reporters themselves are not innocent angels, infact they're known perverts and voyeurs. Local (east coast usa) news anchor Larry Mendte got caught spying on another news anchor Alycia Lane's pc via trojan. He read her email, a federal offense. 2008, Mendte received a sentence of 3 years (later 2/1 years) probation, 6 months home confinement, 250 hours of community service, computer monitoring, a psychiatric evaluation, and a $5000 fine. Additionally, he was ordered by the judge to have no further contact with Lane There should be a guide for people sending in their pc's for repairs and what they should backup/ remove to protect themselves from the pc technicians prying eyes.
Anyways, I think all of us already know this stuff about those companies offering computer repairs, it's all a giant ripoff and ********. It's kinda like car shops.. if you don't know sh*t bout the car, they'll most likely rip you off and pull some crap on you. Humans suck, it's life.
That's because Best Buy doesn't actually fix computers, they mail them off to be fixed. You just have to be a good salesman to get a job with Geek Squad, not PC savvy
Never had a PC fixed by Geek Squad but every LCD or plasma TV we've taken in for warrantee repair has been declared F. U. and replaced with a new similar model. Sweet to get new TVs and monitors every 12 - 15 months.
