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.

    • @[email protected]
      39•1 year ago

      Samsung phones have this but apparently the Samsung diagnostic tool doesn’t work in the repair mode. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

      I just use a secondary app to lock down all apps when it needs serviced then.

        • @logicbomb
          -28•1 year ago

          Yeah it’s great. When anything goes wrong, you can just throw it in the trash and get a new one.

          • @[email protected]English
            24•1 year ago

            Like when I accidentally broke the glass on my camera bump and I was able to buy the replacement and fix it myself for under $20, right?

            • @logicbomb
              -11•1 year ago

              That has to do with the manufacturer, not that it’s android.

                • @[email protected]
                  2•1 year ago

                  I have repaired phone screens on both Android and iPhones, but honestly both suck at this point. One of the first android phones I repaired was a droid 2 and that was fucking painful, then it broke again in a few months 🙃

            • @logicbomb
              -17•1 year ago

              And you believe that’s because it’s an android? So anybody who buys an android phone can expect that nothing will ever go wrong with the hardware?

              Edit: To any morons downvoting, that’s literally what the person said. Here, I’ll quote them: “Nice thing about having an Android is I’ve never needed service”

              Literally saying that the reason they never needed service is that it’s an android. There is no other way to interpret the statement.

                • @logicbomb
                  -6•1 year ago

                  “Nice thing about having an Android is I’ve never needed service”

                  The grammar you’re using simply doesn’t mean what you’re saying it does. “Nice thing about having X is Y” means that Y is a benefit of having X. Your claim is that your never needing service is a benefit of owning an Android.

                  Now you’re claiming that the two things are not dependent upon each other? Like if I said, “Nice thing about having a pet fish is that the air pump for my fish tank is quiet.” That makes no sense, because my air pump being quiet is not dependent upon my owning a fish. You might as well say, “Nice thing about having an Android is that my mom packed a cookie in my lunchbox yesterday.” The reason that sounds wrong is that the grammar requires a dependency.

                  But the truth is, you understand the grammar well enough to know what it means. That’s why you wrote it that way. You just assumed that what you were thinking was right without really thinking about it.