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.

  • @logicbomb
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    -61 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.

      • @logicbomb
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        -51 year ago

        Truth is all I care about. You can continue with your fantasy all you like, but don’t start talking about truth, as if you care about it.

          • @logicbomb
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            -41 year ago

            Which degenerative brain disease do you think causes people to value the truth and to have a basic grasp of English grammar?

            • @[email protected]
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              fedilink
              51 year ago

              Dude. Calm down. You said something that people disagreed with, just accept that’s the case and move on.

              We’ve all had people disagree with us, doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on it achieves nothing.

              • @logicbomb
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                -51 year ago

                It doesn’t matter if people disagree with you. It matters if you’re right. I obviously don’t care what people think, beyond my disdain that humans can actually act this way. It’s disappointing to have to be grouped with you guys.

                  • @logicbomb
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                    -31 year ago

                    Does it physically hurt you when you try to think? I specifically said that it doesn’t matter if people disagree with you.

                    I find it odd that the moment I make a comment saying, “Here are a few characteristics that I think every human should exhibit,” several people come out of the woodwork and essentially raise their hands and say, “Not me! I’m subhuman and proud!”

                • @[email protected]
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                  fedilink
                  41 year ago

                  it matter if you’re right

                  I obviously don’t care what people think

                  If you don’t care then why does it matter?

                  • @logicbomb
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                    -41 year ago

                    If you don’t care then why does it matter?

                    I literally explained in the next sentence. “It’s disappointing to have to be grouped with you guys.”

                    I like to think of humans as thinking beings. The kind who possess the basic ability to communicate properly. The kind who understand that the reason you might say a sentence is to explain something from the previous sentence. Just basic things that separate us from animals.