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Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn
mekane8 writes "Consumer-advocate blog Consumerist ran a sting operation to catch a Best Buy Geek Squad member searching for and stealing media files from a customer's computer. The article includes the story with screen captures and a video of the technician's actions. From that piece: 'Reached for comment, Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens expressed desire to launch an internal investigation and said, "If this is true, it's an isolated incident and grounds for termination of the Agent involved." This is not just an isolated incident, according to reports from Geek Squad insiders alleging that Geek Squad techs are stealing porn, images, and music from customer's computers in California, Texas, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. Our sources say that some Geek Squad locations have a common computer set up where everyone dumps their plunder to share with the other technicians.' A related story from a former Geek Squad employee details the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Are you kidding me? You expect these people, who are the low-paid,
bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics? Why are they any different
from a parking lot attendant or car wash guy? Because they're techies?
Don't kid yourself.
Heck, at two companies I've worked for (both big-name, publicly traded),
they've caught (and fired) one or more sysadmins reading other people's
email.
Sadly, The Ethical IT Guy is on the verge of becoming a quaint holdover
from the previous century.
Encrypt it, or lose it.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
really?
It's hard for me to get worked up about this.
I doubt that these guys are obtaining and distributing files that couldn't be obtained for free using a good BitTorrent client (albeit also illegally). I mean, sure, most managerial types agree that you shouldn't do that stuff at work, but aside from the misuse of on-the-clock time, is it much different than a bunch of college roommates using a shared network directory for their downloads?
Stealing homemade sex videos and that sort of thing from customers' computers is another matter. That would be a pretty major invasion of privacy and should be grounds for substantial, per-case lawsuits. I suppose it would be hard for a corporate overseer to distinguish between "legit" and privately owned media in that situation.
Home videos? Private diaries? Love letters? Stay out, Geek. But "media" . . . as a customer, what have I lost, exactly? To be honest, I'd rather have a competent technician solve my configuration problems and help himself to my MP3 directory than have to waste time with ignorant first-level servicepeople in a tightly overseen, "theft-free" big-box environment.
Geek Squad ought to get a grip. Oops, maybe that's the source of their problem.
Hold on, my hypocrisy meter just went red.....
If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!"
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
So what you are saying is that if I get something from Bittorrent over my comparatively slow link that's not stealing, but being efficient about it (which these guys seem to be) is now 'stealing'. Check.
Oh, and don't even try that: 'But on Bittorrent it's OK since I have permission' bit with me, unless you yourself made the content (and for the love of God I hope it ain't Porn), your 'permission' is about as relevant as me giving you 'permission' to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I didn't think you could *steal* copyrighted data, you could just be unlawfully redistributing.
If you allow someone unsupervised access to your house they will eat your food.
If you allow someone unsupervised access to your computer they will copy your porn.
Geek Squad/Best Buy employees are no different than walmart employees, and it doesn't require any more IT knowledge than a wallmart janitor would need to get the job. When I work at "the Buy" I remember the *procedure* for fixing a computer was reformat and reload. These aren't professionals and, while what happened was wrong, it shouldn't surprise anyone.
...I thought it was only copyright infringement and not stealing if you're only copying data and not taking anything away from the original owner?
Hey, isn't that a picture of the Geek Squad dude with Paulie Walnuts in that second link? That's just about the last guy I'd want to get caught stealing pron from...
i heard about this months ago. SD's just NOW posting it? sad.
wow. i had no idea.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
That must be how they always catch the child porn guys that are having their computer worked on. A technician always "just accidently discovers" it.
Goddamn, I want geeks to fix my computer, and any "technician" who DIDN'T do it must not be a geek to begin with.
A related story from a former Geek Squad employee details the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Ever since Best Buy opened here locally a few years ago, they've been on my crap list. Their handling of extended warranties is shady, their salesmen tend to be pushy, and their prices are high. Their "intranet" fiasco is more icing on the cake - I've long made it a point to avoid Best Buy!
So, when I want service, I go local. When I'm buying cheap hardware, I go to Circuit City or Office Depot.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Well, wouldn't you?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I quit working for the Geek Squad about 8 months ago, and have since quit the IT field altogether, but I can safely say this was not an isolated incident. It was a common occurrence, at multiple locations I had worked at, to copy customer files onto flash drives or even burn them onto CDs. We also did have a computer set up at the store's expense for the sole purpose of caching whole copies of customer hard drives for "archival" if they purchased a data backup. (It was helpful as sometimes the customers would destroy the DVDs we burned for them and we were able to give them another set, but it was also routinely plundered with searches for *.jpg and so forth.)
This wasn't something I ever did, mainly because I had my own pornography to look at and never came across anything even remotely interesting in any other way, but other "Agents" would do it on a routine basis.
Oh, FFS. It's not stealing, it's illegal filesharing.
I, for one, sympathize with the perps here. Who would begrudge the Best Buy Geeksquad drudges some cheap thrills? Besides, if they're busy sharing porn, that makes it less likely they're doing something awful to the innards of Auntie Mae's PC... I would hope.
My real feeling on this, though, are that it's all part of Best Buy's sales model. They can get a lot of customers to purchase an additional 120-gig hard drive if it comes preloaded with porn.
Also, did you notice they now sell tissues and lotion? It's all about synergistic product lines, folks.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I more or less agree with you... however, the one difference is the invasion of privacy aspect. Like you say, who knows if those video files are porn, home videos, secret business files, whatever.
I'm not sympathizing or condemning, and it's beside the point, but: copying files is NOT stealing. It may be illicit, illegal, immoral, or any of a number of other things that people other than me can debate. But it's not stealing. Stealing would be if they copied the files and erased them off of the hard drives, thereby depriving the hardware owners of the data.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
First of all, they're copying your porn. Not steeling it. And second of all, who cares? How is he hurting anyone by making a copy of your porn? And if it's porn that you are personally starring in or other personal information, why aren't you putting that somewhere else before letting someone on your computer?
This isn't new. How do you think computer tech's have the biggest music collections? They been doing it for years..
Does not information want to be free? It is not stealing, is it? Therefor it must be Ok.
Or are we all despicable **AA shills now?
Or do we hate Best Buy more, than we hate **AA?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You're right, it's not stealing, I think it was a bad choice of words. But it is invasion of privacy.
The issue isn't GS guys stealing a customer's porn. It's the tech stealing the customer's HOME MADE porn.
Like pictures of the customer and his gf getting it on, for example.
That's quite a bit different.
Colour me shocked. A techie copying porn off of a computer.
:rolleyes:
That's never happened before.
Now, if they're deleting it after copying it, then it's stealing, and that'd be news.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
You must be new to /.
Ha ha ha...Paulie Walnuts!!!
How do you know the people who think this was wrong and people who download off Bittorrent are the same people?
I ran a computer repair shop (note that I said "ran" not "worked at"), and this practice of "stealing" porn, music and movies was practically company policy. In fact, that's pretty much all we did. Ninety percent of repairs went like this:
1) Backup customer data (read: customer's porn, music, movies and various documents. Occasionally saved games)
2) Copy over WinXP syspreped mini-image, wiping hard drive.
3) Fix partition table.
4) Run through XP mini-install.
5) Grab any straggler updates.
6) Copy back customer data.
7) Delete crap we don't care about from backup.
8) At the end of the day, copy porn, music and movies that don't suck to my laptop and clean the image/backup server.
(In case you didn't realize, 90% of repairs are people who got so much spyware and viruses that a wipe is just faster. Especially with the mini-image (which is just a copy of XP/2k, fully updated, with all the various media players and firefox, that's been syspreped and shrunk down to the minimum (with ntfsresize on Knoppix). On first boot, XP will auto resize the fs to the maximum if the fs is smaller than the partition.))
This was some time ago (read: long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies), but I see no reason that it doesn't still work like that. I mean, come on, it's faster than bittorrent.
...As in "removed it utterly from the system, with no hope of recovery" or as in "made a copy for themselves" sort of stealing that the RIAA likes to claim in court?
Hell, if it was good stuff, more power to them. If you're addled enough to send in a hard drive with your system for service, then you can expect someone will be plowing through it.
Imag0
It's not stealing. It certainly may not be professional, but it isn't stealing. The article would like to make it a big deal because they're violating the trust of the paid customer, blah blah blah...but it still isn't stealing.
Although if they were really nice, they'd load it back onto the customer's drive after they reformat and reinstall.
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
Wtf? It's Consumerist that's calling it "stealing" (and yes, I would call that "copying", not "stealing"). How the fuck is it "hypocrisy" when entirely different people say different things?
I really don't get the people on the "copyright infringement is stealing" bandwagon - why don't we also start calling both rape and murder "arson", what's the difference, they are all bad, right?
sic transit gloria mundi
I heard that they are linking the porn and music togeather to create a network of insatiable media in order to cripple our society before the invasion of earth.
Give me a break- can anyone tell me why I give a f***?
Dear Stupid, You are mixing two different issues here. You see, you have your copyright crap over here... and then you got your privacy crap over here... lets keep our crap separate for argument sake.
It's not stealing. If they're making a copy and keeping it for themselves, how does that prevent me from using my copy.
This is akin to me taking a book with a broken spine into be repaired and having the repairman make a photocopy of my book but then return it to me in good condition. Why would I care if he's got a copy? Unless, of course, it's my personal diary, but then it's kind of my fault for not encrypting it in the first place. How would he know he wasn't supposed to look at it if I didn't put something there to tell him?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I can see the liabiliy and negative PR associated with this kind of activity. I can understand if it has become a festering problem and common knowledge that employees are violating customer trust.
On the other hand, not having a public policy that addresses the privacy of the contents of customer's computer or electronic device was a huge oversight. In fact, if there existed an employee "dumping ground" for pilfered items, where the existance of such can be traced back up the chain of command at Geek Squad will look really bad for upper management.
The end result is that the consumer should be warned beforehand not to turn over a computer or electronic device that has personal data.
Speakeasy to also go down the toilet?
Why the hell weren't they ghosting these boxes first and searching through the ghosted image? If you're gonna be spying on people, you should at least have the sense to prevent them spying on you.
From my understanding, most of the problems that Geek Squad resolves can be solved by selling the consumer MORE stuff. e.g. (New Computer, Memory, Harddrive, Software). Geek Squad was probably a good concept when it started, but it appears economic pressures have pushed Best Buy into the GREED ZONE. If only Walmart wouldn't have started selling those nice new high-margin LCD panels at cut-throat prices.
Oddly, I quit shopping at Best Buy for two reasons, 1) Lack of Product Knowledge in Salespeople, 2) The Loss Prevention Guy that stands at the door and makes you feel like a criminal when you enter and exit.
I used to work for a large company with its own IT department about 10 years ago and co-workers doing the software maintenance would find porn on peoples WORK computer while fixing it and share with the rest of us in IT. Some of it homemade (we assume these people borrowed work cameras to do it because this before everyone had a digital camera).
This can't be limited to just geek squad. I think its a safe bet to assume that if you bring your computer in for repair somewhere that people will dig around. If you make that assumption then you'll never get burned.
I haven't seen any pictures of my co-workers wives and girlfriends naked since I started working at places that contract out their desktop support =/
If someone wants to copy my \music\mp3 directory, more power to them. But, as another person posted, if they go into my \documents\creative_writing I'd be a bit ticked. I'll admit that. Mostly because unlike the music directory, none of the stuff in there is for public consumption. Also, the mp3 directory is 100% reproducible from public networks. It's already out there. Them taking a copy of all my mp3s is just a way for them to save time and bandwidth. My personal files, on the other hand, aren't.
Of course, as a use case this isn't likely, because I wouldn't buy a computer from Best Buy, let alone entrust them with repairing my box. (And of course, I can fix my own damn computer, so...)
This isn't a matter of stealing or copyright or anything like that. It's an invasion of privacy. Best Buy is giving you a contract (both social and written) saying that they respect you private data, and that you can trust them. If their employees root around in stuff they shouldn't, that's a breach of privacy.
Plus, it's a chance to lay down a strawman beat on Best Buy, and who wants to pass up that opportunity?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
No they weren't!!! Best Buy was simply being paid by the RIAA to look for and document illegal copyrighted files on their customers' computers! They swear!
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Its hypocrisy because consumerist is anti-RIAA. They were the ones who did the "Worst Company in America" in which the RIAA won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) and have fairly regular anti-RIAA updates
You used "Best Buy" and "Ethics" in the same sentence! All the big consumer electronics stores suck, make no mistake, but Best Buy sucks a little bit more. They are outstanding in their suckitude. Whether it's their questionable advertising, the general low level of service in their stores, their insistence on signing you up for magazines you don't want when you pay with your credit card or their proclivity toward using rebates instead of discounts because they know most consumers will not bother to cash in the rebates, they suck. There's more sucking going on in Best Buy than you'd find in a Nevada Whorehouse! I wouldn't trust anyone working there to have any more of a sense of ethics than their corporate overlords do and I wouldn't trust their "Geek Squad" to have the technical know-how to turn my computer on, much less fix it!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hell yeah! Run a train on that fileserver!
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Insterestingly enough, a while back on that same blog, there was an article about how Geek Squad snooping around some customer's computer revealed he had child porn.
While computer repair regulations don't exist like, say, auto repair regulations do, at the time I wondered if it would become compulsory for a computer repair shop to search and disclose child porn and similar because won't someone please think of the children.
If you have a safety deposit box at a bank, you're entrusting them not to open it while you're away and look at all the sparklies. If you take your clothes to a cleaner, you entrust them not to wear it out on the town ala. Seinfeld. If you get your car fixed, you entrust them not to wade through those papers in your glove compartment and snicker at that condom from 1974. I think it's a reasonable expectation that you'll have files not related to your problem remain unexamined.
Were it my repair shop, the first thing I'd think of is "wow, we're so not busy right now my employee has the time to search for goodies on client computers?"
More Twoson than Cupertino
When I worked for a managed hosting provider about 6-7 years ago who's legacy customers were permitted to run adult sites, it was trivial for anyone w/ the Admin or root passwords to "plunder" or bypass the authentication schemes to get to the content. Some admins also hosted their own stash of MP3's or other content based on what they had gleaned, freely available to most anyone else who worked there (there may have been simple password protection) - for streaming or downloading as anyone else pleased.
Less than ethical techs or admins probably consider it a "benefit" of the position, and probably assumed that the original "holder" of the content wouldn't care or mind sharing.
This is probably because many people I've run across in the IT field have a somewhat socialistic mentality toward freely accessible content (free for all), whether it be software (Warez), MP3s (original Napster and mp3.com, baby), or "free" pr0n. They may feel entitled to anything they can get their hands on in the due course of their job. This may be regardless of whether the current "holder" of the content (the consumer's PC or customer's server) is legally entitled to the copy or not. I would imagine that the Geek Squad employees also have a "well, everyone does it" mentality when justifying their own course of action, in addition to feeling that the customer simply won't care.
Chock it up to geek culture, and call it a day.
$ man woman *
-bash:
Look. Most comments aren't seeing the picture here. It's not the copying of some 3rd party pron that is the issue. It's the copying of private made at home pictures that are the concern.
Not even gonna read the article. This is just completely stupid.
First... If Geek Squad employees wanted to get that sort of material, they'd probably do much better finding it for themselves on the net. The only advantage they have is finding personal photos that were never meant for distribution in the first place, or if they are really wily, using an IE password viewer to get a free ride on all sorts of sites (or bank accounts, or worse)....
Second... There is no conspiracy. Rather, in some ways, man is now more than ever a victim of circumstance, a discarded relic of the past. Women no longer need them to bring home iron-filled meat, are ravaging the horomones with birth control, and no longer need to nore desire to satisfy men sexually. Should anybody be surprised to find men desperately searching for any release they can get?
Over a decade ago when I used to work at CompUSA the tech department did the same thing. If someone brought in their system to be worked on, the tech goes through it and sees what the problem is. Along he way if the person has a collection of porn, music or videos that we found interesting for whatever reason we would always copy them over to our jazz drives or external hard drives.
Oh and if they had child porn - we'd call the police.
Ave Molech Setting
- The writer indicated that the drives were wiped and reformatted. Obviously the files weren't taken after wiping/reformatting. So, in sequence, the tech gets the PC, finds & copies the files, wipes the drive (deleting the files) and reinstalls windows. Ergo, the files moved off of the PC on to the tech's USB drive (and were no longer on the PC). By the consensus definition, that's stealing.
- I'd agree with the points about copyright infringment, if the files were restored to the PC. However, the article didn't indicate any personal file restoration.
Wow the CEO actually responded to the article, what a PR Blunder.
fill your hard drive with goatse
Geek squad is on about the same level as the kid down the street. We have ALL done that, some family friend, or neighbor, or whatever needs their computer fixed, so we fix it for them. How many of you have honestly worked on a neighbors computer without at least taking a look into ~\My Music\? It goes with the territory and people know it. You cannot honestly tell me that your average consumer takes their computer into the geek squad to have it fixed and expects that they are getting top level support. If you had a bunch of home made pr0n, or private pictures, videos, files, etc on your computer, don't hand it over to some mouth breathing idiot behind a geek squad counter.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
This is always brought up when anybody mentions piracy or "stealing" MP3s, so I just have to point out that the Geek Squad employee isn't stealing anything. He is copying data off somebody's computer, private or not.
when you take something from someone and deprive them of it.
If someone makes copies of files they find on my PC, they are invading my privacy and that is bad. They are not stealing from me. I still have all my pictures.
If I have found that someone has invaded my privacy in this way, I will be unhappy but I should not accuse them of theft!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Unless the homemade sex video they steal is from a famous person, then they can sell it to Penthouse or other random porn company. I'm guessing everyone would be downloading it without worrying about invasion of privacy.
Personally, I have done some pretty tempting machines myself. Includind an aspiring model aquaintance that had nude pictures of herself on the desktop. I can't say that there isn't a voyueristic urge when fixing a PC. Although I have never taken files from someone's personal computer, I can't say that I don't find it understandable.
A work PC is a different story, the IT staff gathers and laughs at some of the stuff we find on work computers. Although it becomes a bit less fun when you have to confront the person about it.
I really dislike going into a Best Buy. I always get this dirty kind of feeling from 80% of the people who work their. They give the impression of being just scumbag salesmen that can't hide the fact they're scumbag salesmen. Geeksquad guys stealing porn is hardly surprising.
A few months ago I was looking at TVs, and the sales guy was this young kid who just oozed sleeze. (If you've ever met a bad sales guy you know what I mean). He was trying to push a certain TV. I went over to Circuit City a few blocks away to see if they had any better prices. I actually wound up buying the same model this BB salesguy was trying to sell me, but the CC guy didn't try to push too hard. He of course tried to upsell my on an HDTV, but he at least had the instincts to back off a little.
Recently I was at Best Buy because they had nice quality speakers really cheap. I checked the website price, and went to the store. The price at the store was higher than the website price, so I asked the sales guy. He went to a terminal, went to the INTERNAL website (the dodge I already knew about from a few lawsuits against BB for this deceptive practice), and proclaimed I was incorrect. Of course I complained and eventually got the website price.. but it left me feeling even more uneasy about how Best Buy isn't the most honest, or trustworthy retailer.
Oh, and don't forget about the racketeering lawsuit filed against Best Buy. Not so great a track record.
AccountKiller
So, stealing is not a good word for it, but it's certainly an invasion of privacy, and it's certainly unethical. We're not talking about a mere copyright violation like downloading music or movies. We're talking about people rifling through your files without your permission.
I don't think you're going to hear people on slashdot complaining about damages to the (RI|MP)AA. This is about the individual, whose rights are being trampled upon.
This has been happening ever since people brought PC's into a service shop. Once the box is in-house, it would be scoured for 'cool stuff', be it images, software, most anything. ( including copying of any disks the customer brought in, espcially before harddrives ). I bet even the FIRST computer in for repair got this treatment.
Not saying its right, but its nothing new at all.
I remember a case where a guy brought his PC in to have a new video card or something installed, the tech found kiddy porn all over his drive, reported it to the police and the guy got busted when he returned to get his computer. They searched his house afterwards ad got him for running a KP ring.
I always wondered about the tech that viewed it, since its illegal for a citizen to even view KP, did he commit a crime too? . And did he break some law by searching in the first place? It wasnt related to the 'repair' in the slightest.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually isn't it stealing?
They make a copy of it for themselves. Then they wipe the drive and reinstall the OS as part of their 'fix'.
You are denied it and they have it, how is that not stealing?
Heck, at two companies I've worked for (both big-name, publicly traded),
they've caught (and fired) one or more sysadmins reading other people's
email.
Typically the guys charged with, "get rid of this SPAM in my InBox!". Yep, I've seen it first-hand, when they don't like the anti-spam guy they go after him for 'reading other people's e-mail'.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Like you say, who knows if those video files are porn, home videos, secret business files, whatever.
You say that like those are different things. (And remember kiddies: removable external storage for your pr0n collection.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
No. In fact, I haven't seen a single post saying that (note: I'm browsing at +2, so I may have missed some). Moreover, I've seen several posts (like this one) reiterating that it isn't stealing.
So, frankly, I think your hypocrisy meter needs recalibration. Or are you calling it hypocrisy because Consumerist calls it stealing, while Slashdot (often, perhaps even generally) doesn't? 'Cause that strikes me as a sort of weird definition of hypocrisy. I mean, I wouldn't normally call my boss hypocritical for not giving me a raise when my wife thinks I deserve one.
For the record: copyright infringement isn't stealing, though it may be unethical. Copying people's porn stashes off their hard drives isn't stealing, though it may be unethical (due primarily to the - naive - presumption of privacy that consumers likely have).
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Yes, ideally, all people should aspire to live their lives ethically.
Now, in this specific case, the computer had a picture of three cute girls. The "geek" checked where that picture was and downloaded the entire folder labeled "out clubbin!!!".
Living ethically is a lot easier when someone isn't deliberately setting you up.
When I worked for a huge non-chain computer store in Massachusetts, technicians would SCOUR every single computer which came in for service looking for porn. I think they had 100 gigs collected from dozens of customer's computers, back in the day when 100 gigs was a lot... Every other computer store / computer service place does the same thing. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE GUYS. THEY HAVE TESTICLES. OF COURSE they're going to hunt for porn.
To be honest, I'm surprised that this is a surprise to anyone. I think the average tech opinion on this is that if you have things you don't want others to see on your computer, you damn well better not mess it up to the point where you have to take it in for repair, or be smart enough to fix it yourself. (And yes, the majority of repairs are only necessary because people click the "OMG PRAWN!" banner ads and then wonder why they have popups and spyware on their system...)
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
Unethical, sure; but how is this stealing? It may be copyright infringement, but we don't even know that.
On the scale of ethical violations, this ranks somewhere around unauthorized eating of a grape in a supermarket (stealing!!!) and picking your nose in public.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Well, I guess they haven't shot anyone in the customer services lines yet for complaining so I guess their ethnics could go lower then they have historically shown. Disclaimer: I haven't been to one of their stores since my son was about five years old and he works for a living now so they may have actually improved but I doubt it and I for one will never shop there again. Once an unethical culture becomes an inherent part of a business it is virtually impossible to clean it out, short of dismantling the business and starting over with new employees, new name, and highly demonstratively ethical management that leave no doubt as to what they expect when they find unethical activity.
Ray Kroc once yanked the franchise from a franchisee when he found a fly in their McDonald's restaurant, perhaps it wasn't the only or true reason but the story went far and wide with McDonald's operators and managers, so while Kroc ran the corporation there was no dirty or pest ridden McDonald's, at least not for long. Corporate culture begins at the top, but if their bottom isn't clean, they stink anyway.
I feel sorry for those guys. I mean o.k. they get paid slightly over min. wage to rummage through others pieces of crap computers in an attempt to fix it. I've always assumed crap like this was their one job perk. Heck, Best Busy should just add some fine print into the Geek Squad's manifesto that says that basically yes they can and will do this at their will.
Before I work on a friend's or family member's computer, I make sure that they are aware that by default I'll be copying any porn, mp3s, warez, or anything else on their computer that I find interesting. If that doesn't scare them off, generally they don't have anything I'll find interesting on their computer anyway. I'd never let another slashdotter "fix" my computer. I do have a lot of files that slashdotters would find interesting.
Ethics? Since when does anyone around here believe any institution has a set of ethics? Individuals may have ethics, but entity's like corporations, governments, and schools don't. I can believe that any given slashdotter may have a set of ethics, but I don't believe that slashdot has any ethics.
Disclaimer: I worked at Best Buy as a PC tech from 1996 to 1998, seasonally (this was well before Geek Squad days). I was 16 when I started. I saw a lot of crazy stuff, both from customers and from our management (most of the managers were let go at one point, supposedly because they had been DEALING COCAINE...but that's just hearsay.)
I am always surprised when I see stuff like this -- shock and astonishment that retail PC techs aren't complete pros. That's not to say that there weren't some good techs there -- there were. But there were also bad techs, because the management at a story like Best Buy knows about retail sales and (hopefully) customer service. They cannot tell the difference between a good tech and someone who can just talk like a good tech, but they do know that, if we were really great techs, we wouldn't have been working at Best Buy. Other posters have mentioned bad behavior as a natural result "bottom of the food chain" and "low-paid" employeees.
We weren't the bottom of the food chain. The sales floor guys were - especially in the computer department. They wanted our jobs. I routinely had guys in their mid-twenties give me shit because I was 16 and had a better job. I wasn't making more than they were since I was seasonal, but that was okay with me. I was making decent money for being 16 in 1996 (about $8 an hour, I think) and the job was as tied to merit as it could have been. If I fixed computers well and quickly, I got a good review and customers left happy. Since a lot of our customers expected to have a miserable experience dealing with us, it was actually a pretty good feeling to make somebody's day and fix in an hour what they thought they'd have to come back for in a week.
I only worked summers and over Christmas, so every time I came back, I had to "prove myself" again as the other full-time techs had invariably either been fired or else moved on to better gigs. For every full-time guy there who knew a lot and showed me a trick or two, there was a guy there three times my age who didn't know anything other than how to reinstall windows, and who resented the smartass 16-year-old who made him look bad. Most of these guys lasted only a couple months, but every now and then you'd get somebody who could weasel their way into the job and manage not to be a bad employee even if they were a bad tech. The fact is that a lot of the "repair" jobs we got back then were really basic. An un-scientific analysis of what I remember the job was like saw maybe one or two machines over an 8 hour shift that actually needed hardware work we were capable of; the rest were OS issues, software problems, driver problems, or else they were hardware issues that we had to send out to our service center. The bad techs just sent more stuff out to service, which wasn't really encouraged since we got a happier customer and probably a better profit margin for our store if we fixed it in-house rather than sending it to a regional service center.
At the end of the day, though, we had a lot of autonomy. The second summer I was there was the best one -- they'd fired all but one of the other techs and (for whatever reason) had a hard time replacing them, so it was just me and this one laid-back dude fixing just about everything, and since we were both pretty good, we got the same amount of work done with half the manpower. The managers rarely enforced the "regional" policies as to how we were supposed to do things (if there even were any) so long as our numbers were good.
Best Buy as a company has about as much oversight of their techs as Honda or VW have of their dealership techs. They're hired locally and monitored locally (if at all). They can try to set some standards for who to hire (realy easy things like A-Plus certification) but it doesn't change the fact that it's a low-ish level job unless you're a masochist and you want to use it as a stepping stone to management.
So I'm not surprised by any of this, but I don't really hold Best Buy responsible unless they knew about it and did
Yes...I've heard of such a place. Mythic, perhaps. A place where all the low rent geeks go to find their jollies because mom upstairs put a NetNanny filter on the DSL.
Is it unethical to protect a customer's data?
Maybe they were just backing up important files prior to software install?
It could happen... and apparently did.
*Still* negative function...
"There is a large distinction between copying files unique to you or your computer, and media files that reside on both your computer and thousands of others."
What is it?
So where's all the fools yelling "Entrapment!!!" this time? Is it because it was the Consumerist, and not the MPAA?
7 48291
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=245487&cid=19
Yeah, that was scored +5 Insightful at one point, maybe we all learned a lesson.
Is anyone really surprised? Seriously?
I spent a couple years behind the counter at a big-time retailer's tech shop (I won't mention where, but let's just say it rhymes with "Whomp-USA") and I can tell you the first thing we did when a new machine came in was run a search for "*.jpg;*.gif;*.avi;*.mpg". Our backup servers and thumbdrives were full of all kinds of stuff. We even used yamipod to pull music off any returned iPods.
The most prized stuff, of course, came off the machines of college chicks with digital cameras. Think your boyfriend will be the only guy ever to see those nude shots you took? Think again, because they were on three different servers and six thumbdrives an hour after you dropped your laptop off.
Hell, I damn near got fired after a girl who came in to pick up her machine asked me how I knew to bring her the right one despite the fact that she hadn't given me her name yet and we hadn't met when she dropped it off...
I would be much more worried about my MP3 folder now. With iTunes' DRM-free codec, you are linked to those files. So if some Geek adding memory snags a couple gigs of your music and throws it up on a P2P, it's going to be your name on them.
How much would it suck to get sued for thousands by the RIAA because some highschool/college punk snagged a copy of your iTunes folder? They have files with your digital signature sitting on a P2P server, and they only have to show that given a preponderance of the evidence you are likely guilty.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'.... Not even close.
Filesharing:
Goofus: "Here, have some of this." Gallant: "OK, Thank you, I will have some of that."
GeekSquadding:
Gallant: "Could you help me tie my shoe?" Goofus: "Sure, we can help you tie your sho... DUDE!!! LOOK AT THESE PICTURES IN HIS WALLET!!!"
What if the Geek Squad techie found child-pornography on the customer's system? Did he cross the line on privacy or played a good Samaritan role by finding it then reporting it to the local police officials?
:D.
Besides, chances are, the stuff the GS techies find on their customer's PC such as porn, and mp3 music are most likely stolen in the first place. Good thing they don't work for the RIAA and MPAA
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Hold on, my hypocrisy meter just went red.....
If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!"
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
No, dude false alarm, didn't you notice your "reasoning abilities" meter is so low? At that low levels, the other meters go in totally random measures and can't be trusted at all. Trust me, I'm a geek.
The issue at hand is stealing potentially private information of one's harddrive, without permission. Bittorent is about someone willfully uploading a file to share it with others, and then a group of people sharing bandwidth to get this file.
The difference is sort of like:
a) looking up a gang bang event in your neighborhood and dropping by to join the party
b) someone on the street hitting you with a slab of wood in the back and raping you
See?
Your argument sounds faintly similar. It doesn't matter if you are paid low, you do your job with integrity oryou quit and do something else. WTF mate?
Blar.
I more or less agree with you... however, the one difference is the invasion of privacy aspect. Like you say, who knows if those video files are porn, home videos, secret business files, whatever.
Even worse, what is they're all of the above at the same time?!
I'd hate that to get in the wrong hands for sure...
I worked for Geek Squad prior to it being called Geek Squad and after the name change. The story is absolutely true as fellow technicians did exactly what was expressed in this story. There was a central machine that all the vids,images went into but that was not the sole purpose of the machine. All tech benches have a central machine that we used to store our tools and to conduct virus scans. I worked in a college town so the pictures of sorority girls were pretty graphic. I was there to get a paycheck, others took the time to invade people's privacy. I don't believe I recall them specifically searching. But when customers would request spyware removal or data backups, you see filenames flash across the screen. Some techs choose to look further when they'd see filenames like "sorority party, drunken flashing" or something like that. BestBuy has a policy of retaining data backups for up to a month when someone requests one. We'd burn them to dvds or cds and keep a copy just in case the copy we burned for them was unreadable in their drive at home. For example if we used DVD+R and their drive only supported DVD-R if we didn't have a copy on hand then all of their data would be lost and we'd be in trouble. Well those backups were on our central machine so techs would look through them and find this porn. Get the picture?
Who would've thought Best Buy wanted to enter into the porn distribution market?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Did no one notice that they tried this for three months at "about a dozen" Best Buys and only one agent took the bait? I'm sorry, but this is very far from evidence of systemic problem.
As one reddit user put it: "we stuck a computer loaded with temping pics in front of a dozen minimum wage employees and only one of them copied it."
I'm on your side on this. I don't want a repair person making copies of what ever they find on my hard drive.
I think that your example might be a little off. How about:
A plumber comes over to fix the sink. "Enjoys" the old fasioned printed pornography that he finds in the bathroom. Charges you for the whole thing.
It's still an outrage, but not quite the forcible sodomy that you describe...
-- Sig under construction...
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
As an IT guy, if you make a copy of the porn, you haven't taken it from the guy. The valet guy can't "copy" your spare change; you'll probably notice it missing, which would be bad for him.
:-)
OTH if I were a valet I'd be making copies of all the CDs I found in people's visors.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The moral of the story here is obvious: ALWAYS check for monitor applications before you start 'fixing'!
After watching the video I can't decide which is more amusing: the fact that people are actually surprised that a young, underpaid, under-qualified "technician" working at a retail "PC repair shop" would copy off what looked to be nudie pictures stored on a desktop, or that the aforementioned "technician" got busted by a local VNC server.. those aren't exactly sneaky about running on Windows with the tray icon and all..
Perhaps related to this is a discussion of separating your data from your OS, likely on different drives. I am seeing a lot of comments regarding "secret" and "private" files or data. Well, if that's the case, I posit that folks should keep their data on a separate hard drive from wherever they have Windows installed. I don't have much on my data drive that I would mind others seeing, but I still don't like the idea of handing over my computer to someone else anyways. (Disclaimer: I've never had to go to the Geek Squad or a similar service.)
I post a serious comment when the preview word is 'pricks'?
Bush's Law: As an online discussion concerning ethical behavior grows longer, the probability of a mention of George W. Bush approaches one.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Really. Show me a dictionary that says "stealing" is "taking something that's not yours IN SUCH A WAY THAT THE ORIGINAL IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE", and maybe I'll give some attention to the often-heard "It's not stealing!" argument.
Stealing is when you take something you weren't supposed to take. Period. Just because more and more proprety can be copied, leaving the original in place, doesn't mean it's okay to steal. Hypocrits.
With BitTorrent and other P2P apps you are deliberately sharing anything in your shared folder or whatever you are transferring/seeding. You are choosing what to share.
Stuff on your HD is not, on the other hand, being shared or offered to anyone for download. No one has the right to poke around in files that you did not offer for download.
It's like a garage sale. You can poke around in the items for sale and make offers or take items, as marked, but you cannot help yourself to anything elsewhere in the garage/yard or in the house itself. Doing so is theft/burglary.
i am a soviet space shuttle
TFA says they took their entrapment box to "about a dozen" geek squads, and finally found one to do this, and then cry WOLF! I thought the Consumerist was a decent blog until this crap sensationalist story, which has now been picked up by freakin' slashdot (of course) who added the headline "Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn".
1. When running an entrapment scheme, a 1:12 ratio is hardly damning of the whole organization
2. Who cares? Was the entrapment author deprived of his pr0n? No, someone just got a copy.
3. If you have super secret pr0n or whatever on your computer, DON'T TAKE IT TO BEST BUY. Hire someone to come to your house so you can discuss your concerns and sit next to them while they do their thing.
Give me a break. Ethics?! How about journalistic ethics?
Shame on the Consumerist and shame on Slashdot.
Not really looking for a fight here, but what is the difference beween your creative_writing folder and say an unreleased song? An in house version of a movie (you know, the ones that say not for distribution)?
And as for the privacy thing, where is the line there? Can NO ONE look at it? Do you want to restrict access to only people you approve of? Maybe you want them to pay a fee, or maybe you wish them to only look at it in a certain place, or use a specific type of media?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
If someone gets hold of my data I would be glad if he just copied some films and music.
But when people start poking in data of other people - it is reasonable to assume someone copies your emails, passwords and other personal information along with your porn...
So your girlfriend found out that those naked pictures and movies you took are out on the internet and she is so very mad at you.
Simple, tell her the geeksquad STOLE them off your computer.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Commentary on the crime of the century there. It reminds me of the Cops episode where they parked a tractor-trailer next to projects in a low-income area with fake electronics and merchandise within ... along with a squadron of cops behind a false wall. Yeah, they managed to arrest a few twelve-year olds who couldn't resist prying open the doors. Afterwards those morons stood around giving each other high-fives and whooping it up. What a pathetic waste of time and resources. They sure cleaned up the streets (and I am very pro-cop).
... I have a position with access to everything, and have no issues with keeping my nose out of it... but we're talking kids here, and kids who are getting paid squat, and kids who work with a bunch of other kids ... is this news? Personally, I am glad that the consumerist is bringing such egregious acts to light so that luddites and grandparents the world over can enter into a service agreement secure in the knowledge that no pimply-faced kid is going to look at their porn.
The self-righteous, sanctimonious note struck by the consumerist voice-over is nauseating.
Think what you will about ethics
One other point: No one was deprived of their media. They were copied, but they also remained on the original system.
Fuck off, consumerist.
(IANAL)
This was a 3-month Sting Operation??
It took them 3 months to catch a single geeksquad employee. Now they're trying to play it off like they've got the scandal of the century! The ego of some blogs out there. Not to mention their smug reaction when the Geek Squad CEO asks them to identify the agent so he can be fired. A better title would have been, "we stuck a computer loaded with temping pics in front of a dozen minimum wage employees and only one of them copied it."
Basically the same reason as your accountants. You by definition pretty much have to give the people managing your computer infrastructure access to the company secrets.
Oh, it's also a perfect industrial espionage position. You can get into the innards of a competitor and be kept up to date completely automatically on what they're up to. If the technical guy is good it can be almost undetectable. In really big companies, it's almost certainly going on constantly.
See the military for security systems to prevent this. Read as very expensive and major pain to set up and manage.
Deleted
For some reason I suddenly feel a lot less comfortable with Speakeasy.
So, who's the new Speakeasy? That is, a Linux-friendly ISP for the Seattle area who have reasonable speed and are OK with you running servers.
My car has some niceties I have added on myself. While I certainly do not take my car to just any mechanic, there are some (rare) exceptions when it cannot go to my usual mechanic (i.e. warranty work I had done in the past). An example of once such feature is a very loud stereo system. I actually take the electronic toll pass, change, and especially the amplifiers, and sub woofers out of the car before taking it in because I know the volume would otherwise be maxed out when I get it back from the shop. I simply do not trust just anyone outside of myself and my close friends to have those items within their reach. Furthermore, I am also careful, as with anybody else, to only hand them the keys they need to operate the vehicle, and do not provide them with my house keys or keys to anything other than the car.
People need to take the same types of precautions with computers. If possible, back up your files elsewhere (i.e. optical media, portable hard drive) or consider using a network storage device (many home network storage devices are available now with RAID, and are not terribly high in price). Just as you would with a car, take out any money and private/personal belongings and put it elsewhere for while it is in the shop. Also, use different passwords for your logins than you use for your email accounts and the-like, as this is synonymous to only providing them with the key/keys they need.
Currently being sued by Sysinternals and probably by GRC (Spinrite) also. ...Look into Nerds On Site for an outstanding group of on-site techs geared more towards SME (and ethics).
They who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. B.Fkln
It's damn sad to hear from so many on this post that this conduct is so common that it's OK? "Bob and Sally does it, why not me?" I've read the justifications for these illegal actions and your either lying or criminal. Sorry, there's no Grey area. Face up to the facts, your a f*cking crimal if you take from your customers something that didn't belong to you. Why not search through the customers house while your there for anything else that might be of interest? Go ahead thieves, mod this to oblivion, but your still a f*cking thief if you take something without permission that didn't belong to you.
what somebody who knows how to install that kind of software on their computer was doing by sending their PC to the Geek Squad.
There are Personal Ethics and Business Ethics.
Many people will do things in their personal life which may but unethical; these same people can approach business with the highest ethics.
Very few people are ethical about everything they do, but if you are in a position of trust because of your job and you violate that trust you are worthless.
The description, of having a company machine dedicated to holding the spoils, is a sign of not only unethical employees, but of unethical management and business.
There has been several cases where I live of people being caught with child pornography because they took their computer in for repair and the place they took it to found childporn on their computer. At first you will think this is a good thing; until you realize that it was probably unethical for them to find the files. (Accidents happen, and obvious filenames are excluded from this.). The problem is, if they found the files by snooping through the system, what's to say they don't plant files on customers they dislike? Nothing.
If you were surprised at this your obviously haven't been around IT very long. Every IT department does this (assuming they aren't "too busy"), and if you think any are don't you're being pretty foolish. At least these guys were just getting porn for their personal use, and not trying blackmail, stealing account info, or selling personal information on the black market (that would of perked my interests). Nerds (I refuse to use the popularized term "geek" since it's pathetically wrong) being voyeuristic isn't news.
Doesn't surprise me. I've only known of Geek Squad since they were purchased by Best Buy, and they always emanated the strong aura of oily, unscrupulous car salesmen, except not having any real idea of what a car, or in this case computers, are. Kitschy VW Bugs and goofy uniforms should scream "Image, no technical expertise" to anyone that's listening. Only very few can successfully do both.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I'm sorry, but this is not a reason to say that best buy is unethical. This is not carte blanche.
I worked at a small computer service business across the street from Best Buy, they were probably our greatest source of customers. I was an onsite tech, so I guess I competed directly with Geek Squad - the difference being that we catered almost entirely to small businesses and our onsite techs had to have certifications. We did good work, and I'm proud of what I did when I was there. I didn't take shortcuts.
Anyway, we had a clause similar to "#10". And let me tell you - it wasn't there to screw the customers. It was there because, as the guy says, WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIX COMPUTERS. The problem is that best buy's first instinct is to wipe and reload (to fix any problem - broken CD ROM? Try a w/r. Fan noise? try a w/r). We always told the customers that we should back up their data - and we had USB - powered notebook drives to do it on while we were onsite. Knoppix CD for the win (I guess ubuntu these days).
Trust me, though - that clause doesn't have to be for the purposes of "screwing the customer". Because as soon as you don't have one of those type clauses, someone will come in with their company computer that's working "but making a clicking noise", and the first time you plug it in, the hard drive will be completely toast, and all of a sudden it becomes your problem that their quickbooks payroll files are gone, and you better hope that the freezer trick will work on this hard drive.
It's unfair to claim that point #10 is the reason why geeksquad is devil incarnate.
What I don't understand is the idea that more computers piling up to be fixed is a bad thing. What a responsible company should do is inform customers about the wait time "till it hits the bench", and realize that having 2 weeks worth of computers to fix is a good thing; at least you know you have (2 weeks x number of techs x number of hours worked by techs on computers) worth of money to come in. If you want to turn a downside into an upside, do what we did - offer an extra $50 or $100 fee to jump your computer up to the top of the queue ("emergency service fee").
~Wx
sig?
Charging $30 to install iTunes is theft.
Check the instructions that came with your meter. If it's like mine, there's a big warning that says something like, "WARNING: Apply only to individual people one at a time. Applying to a group of people will return nonsensical results and will likely result in your making an ass of yourself in public." Slashdot is a mixed group of people with differing opinions. Attempting to pin a particular set of beliefs on Slashdot's posters as a whole is foolish. That you can find, say, two different people in the same group with different beliefs doesn't make you a clever investigator of hypocrisy, it makes you look stupid.
I'm very much part of the group arguing that "theft" and "stolen" are deeply inaccurate words for describing copyright infringement. And in this case it's not really theft either, so we should avoid those words. Now, it's not the "exact same thing," as it may not may not be copyright infringement, depending on what files the techs made copies of. What it absolutely is is a violation of privacy, which may not be illegal, but is immoral and should be grounds for being sacked by Best Buy. Depending on what exactly was copied, it might also be copyright infringement.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
The unreleased song and the in-house version of a movie are still "public" if they were downloaded from public sites. The breach of privacy came when someone stole the band's master tapes or ripped the screener; once it's uploaded to the internet, it's no longer private.
As for where to draw the line with regard to privacy, I'd say that if you can come up with a list of the specific people who have permission to access something, then you can legitimately call it private. If you couldn't come up with such a list, then it's not private, because you've willingly released it to an unknown number of people who you can't track down. That's essentially the same rule that the Interactive Fiction Competition uses to disqualify games that have been been "previously released", while still allowing beta testers and co-authors to have access to games before they're submitted.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
What are you talking about?
The cops have women dress up like prostitutes dress and hang out in areas where prostitutes hang out.
What's "illegal" about that?
It's entrapment when the fake prostitute offers sex for money BEFORE the guy does. Because the guy MAY NOT have offered money for sex on his own.
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'.... No. It's not the "exact same thing," nor is it "stealing." It's a violation of privacy. It's not stealing because there's no loss of material. It's a loss of privacy. That's it. Theft is dependent on scarcity, and this is isn't an issue because an exact copy is made. Material was in fact created, not misappropriated. Give up on trying troll on the idea that somehow the standards that apply to a scarcity based world exist in a post-scacity environment. They don't, and they never did, because it's impossible to lose anything.
Oh and not to put too fine a point on the whole central problem the main premise of your post, but no one called this "stealing" jackass! Oh, and don't even try that: 'But on Bittorrent it's OK since I have permission' bit with me, unless you yourself made the content (and for the love of God I hope it ain't Porn), your 'permission' is about as relevant as me giving you 'permission' to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. No. It's every bit as relevant here, because it's not theft, and it never was. This is all about an expectation of privacy. In P2P I decide whether and what I want to share off my drive. This is them rumaging through my stuff and taking whatever I want. In the real world this would be putting a stack of stuff on the the curb with a sign that reads "free or best offer" and people coming up and rumaging through that, versus coming home and finding some guy digging through your bedroom closet.
No one gives a shit if someone makes a copy of your porn collection (unless perhaps it's your private homemade porn) or your mp3 collection. What's really the problem is if it was something of more value, like your bank account information, or your passwords or something like that. Porn and mp3s are publically available, my personal information isn't.
Again, your Brooklyn Bridge argument is of no consequence, because you're trying to apply the rules of scarcity economy to a post-scarcity one. They don't apply. There's only one Brooklyn Bridge. If you wanted to make your analogy appropriate, and you didn't, it would have been "[You] giving [me] permission to copy the Brooklyn Bridge." Oh snap! That completly changes everything, because now there's two Brooklyn Bridges! Well that's inconvient, so let's just ignore that shall we?
Once it has been released, it's out there, and there's very little any copyright laws can ever do about it being shared. That is a whole other barrel of arguing monkeyfish, though.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Overhyped story, putting folders with porn on your desktop is fairplay if you ask me.
This is the equivalent of putting a porn magazine on the passenger seat of your car, taking it to a garage for a repair and after it being suprised the mechanic read it or photocopied it.
If the video had shown the geek was scanning for hidden, encrypted folders or drives, tried to crack em and whatnot, now that would be unenthical, but this... jeez.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
It is very widely consider wrong to ... invade people's privacy by looking through all their documents and photos without permission, etc.
This is not considered wrong by our own government which makes a regular practice of spying on its own citizens as much as possible. Not only are our documents searched, along with our accounts, travels, communications, etc...our government even goes so far as to force us to pose for naked-body-scanners at some airports.
If our government is to serve as any kind of example, then we should consider the invasion of the privacy of others to be simply a matter of course. After all, they really *shouldn't* have anything to hide, right? And if they *do*, shouldn't I be trying to find out about it?
When I worked as a technician at Fry's, I regularly observed *supervisors* grabbing "interesting" material off a customer's machine. Honestly I don't see what the big deal is. It's small time copyright violation, big deal. I personally didn't do it since I rarely saw anything worth taking, but I never felt grossly offended when other guys did.
I did get a laugh the one time I removed a Barbie game CD from a machine that had more voluntarily installed porn dialers and pictures on it than I could count. The amount of porn pop ups alone on start up had to have been enough to make daddy tell the little girl "Don't start the computer without Daddy around, ok?"
On one hand, it is obviously an ethics violation. On the other hand, it is also usually a victimless crime (unless the cops are involved, i.e. kiddie porn). So some greasy teenagers copied a bunch of porn, videos, and music from your hard drive; what damage does this really do to you?
without seeing the actual porn involved. Any links?
If the media is simply copied, it's not stealing. Stealing implied depriving someone of property; from the sound of it, all files are put back on the hard drive after Windows is wiped and reinstalled. Copying might be copyright infringement in some cases, but it is not stealing, for the love of cheese-filled pretzels!
The only time I can see someone being upset is if one of the techies got into some personal data like a diary. If I were ever stupid enough to send in a computer for repairs without encrypting anything personal first, I'd consider it my own fault. But I wouldn't mind people copying my music collection, seeing as it's a bunch of crappy MIDIs I've made...
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
I repaired phones for a wireless carrier. Sales reps would come into the back to give me a phone, but already have gone through msot of the media files. Especially if it was some hot chick.
I did what I could to maintain some integrity of the work place, but when even the store manager is sneaking a peak I was pretty much destined to failure.
No sig for you!!
Even the computer name is HONEYPOT, check out the log. Too bad he probably doesn't know what this term means and found an extreme way to find out :)
You're missing the point I'm afraid.
The issue is not WHAT they're stealing, it's
the fact they have been entrusted to fix a
problem on the system and abusing that trust
to take whatever they find.
It doesn't matter what the content is, your
leaving your computer with them for whatever
reason is NOT a carte blanche open invitation
to copy whatever they want.
Assume, for a moment, you've legally purchased
and downloaded some semi expensive application
from the net. Not unheard of these days, many
offer instant downloads of their products.
( Z-Brush comes to mind and is several hundred
dollars in price )
Would you have an issue with the Geek Squad
making a copy of that ? Or maybe your Quicken
data file ? Your email folder perhaps ? An
I-Tunes directory ? Pick a file ?
Yeah, I hear you out there. Encrypt it or
burn it or put it on a portable drive.
Ok, think about this for a half second.
What kinds of people are likely to utilize the
service provided by someone like Geek Squad ?
Visions of your parents or grandparents should
be shooting through your head right about now.
What are the ODDS of your parents being able to
setup an encryption system of ANY kind ? The
rare parents will be able to burn a CD. Maybe.
After a phone call to you.
These are the kinds of folks they're abusing.
The Geek Squad employee should have seen a big
red flag when they came across the D0wnl0aded
Muz1c and Pr0N folders. . . . .
LOL I myself find this funny.
And Take a minute to think back to all the clebs. that have gotten arrested in the pass years over stuff they had on their computers when they took it to a tech. Do you actually think the tech was looking at some program or hardware problem. "Hell No" he was doing a "dir/a/s *.wmv" from c:\. Let the be a lesson to you non-techs. Have good porn and get good service. Have bad porn and you get reported.
LOL my confirm image word is "paranoia".
TGIF!
This was going on well before geek squad existed at Best Buy. The PC repair desk in PCHO always has a stack of blank CD's and DVD's for copying data - NOT for the purpose of service. At my store the back room was where people would meet to compare plunder and agreements would be made and during their shift, providers would produce copies to be distributed to whoever wanted it in the parking lot after work. A common tactic back in the day was to rip a corner of a new release palette (best buy gets new games 3 days to a week before release), claim it as damaged en route, make copies and hand them out at lunch. The distrobution network existed long before Geek Squad, but since its creation it has only swelled.
Why do people not undertand the distinction? It is really easy: If you steal, then the stolen object is not with the original owner anymore! Too hard to understand? I think not.
So, with that said, this is invasion of privacy, espionage, copytight infringement and unauthorized use of data processing equipment. Might even get a higher sentence than ordinary theft.
I might add that anyone concerned about his/her privacy shoould use drive encryption anyways, or remove the drive before giving the computer in foreign hands.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
using a computer
end of story
I was trying to explain why the same behavior is NOT true of car repairmen, valets, dry cleaners, etc... they can't misappropriate what you leave with them without your noticing.
IT guys can do it without evidence of wrongdoing... so... it happens.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
no other IT tech would ever do such a thing.
The only thing new here is that someone went looking to make a story.
I doubt any of the consumers care, since they would be out exactly nothing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This reinactiment show what happened at a local Best Buy.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
excellent, you compared copying data with rape.
Well done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I would simply remove the entire hard disk from my computer if there was an hardware problem needing repair that is unrelated to the HD.
If it's OS related I can fit is on my own. If it's disk related: I hope to have my own backups since it's too late anyway. If it's something else, I either buy the part myself or turn it in for repair under warranty without the disk.
Things like data and identity theft are alll too easy if you have access to a regularly used computer.
Sure, but Bush is the current--and most flagrant--example.
That said, you're quite right, the problem is systemic and has been going on for a long time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it, though: indeed, it means we absolutely must try to do something, and that it will take even more effort to do so.
Corruption being a widespread and old-fashioned pastime of the rich and powerful does not in any way diminish its severity and the degree to which we should condemn and those who participate in it.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I used to work at an independent repair shop, and yes, this was common practice. Some of my co-workers were interesting people with unusual tastes and as they say "Truth is stranger than fiction", so customer's personal pictures were a popular topic of conversation.
Now, I swear I am not making this up and I mention it not because it has any bearing on the ethics of the matter, but just because it's pertinent and I want to know if it happens in other repair shops.
In the year I worked there several clients came in with folders on their desktop with labels like *Hot Pics*, filled with nude pictures of themselves posing sexy or wrestling in oatmeal or whatever. Twice we got customers using such pictures as their backgrounds. There's nothing quite like giving some girl their computer back when 15 minutes earlier you were looking at a picture of some dude's cock in her mouth (by-the-by I'm a girl and straight, so color that situation with perplexity rather than manly dirty thoughts).
Is this weirdness unique to Austin or is this some new, un-named form of exhibitionism?
> dumps their plunder I used to plunder this girl's dump myself...
officer 1: and... in the briefcase?
Dude: oh, just... papers... business papers... my papers, papers from work.
officer 1: And what do you do Mr. Lebowski?
Dude: I'm unemployed.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
I've worked in either the office machine service field, office automation field, or IT field for about 31 years. At one time I had most of the attornies in my home town as clients. I couldn't listen to the office chatter - if any one of them considered me anything but discreet and professional, I would be unable to work in the entire state. I'd be getting a new job, probably something involving french fries.
And that was just typewriter service.
As I moved on to word processors and PCs, the ethics didn't change. Don't look, don't copy. It's not worth the trouble. Even when I moved to a bigger city, the threat of being caught outweighed any value of the data.
Plus, I wanted to be able to look my clients in the eye, hard to do if I've just browsed through their kiddie pr0n collection. I'd just as soon not know who had what where.
I did have a few clients ask me to come in and remove 'some stupid picture that just showed up on my desktop OUT OF NOWHERE!!! Darn. I did explain to them how it happened (clicking on the link, bonehead), and most never did it again.
At one time I was seriously into pr0n, way back when Usenet was Useful. I had gigs, so much I had to save it onto CDs by the dozens. I got pr0n spam most people would pay for. I'm past that now, thank God. But back then, it was too easy. And I know many of my customers also indulged. I just didn't look.
As my first employer told me, looking at stuff, overhearing conversations, you are just busting out to tell someone what you saw/heard. Pretty soon, you feel like 8 pounds of shit in a 5 pound sack.
Of course, young kids today have to have the same ethics taught to them early. About 5th grade, at least. And Napster/Bittorrent/Pirate Bay aren't teaching the right lessons. Information doesn't want to be free. It doesn't 'want' anything. People who make great music deserve to be paid for it, and if everyone else dips their beak in and leaves them with a dime for every dollar them generate, your complaint isn't with the artist, it's with the system. Stealing from the system leaves the artist without even that dime. And rifling through customer's hard drives is just plain stealing. And an invasion of privacy.
Remember those stories of Harvard professors being dismissed for having pr0n on their office puters? At the time, the question I had was why the tech was looking at the images. Not for restoral purposes. All I ever needed was a filename.
Just my $.02. Carry on. Dumb Geeks.
rick
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
MPU - this is the first response I've seen that addresses the OP's error in reasoning.
I can see the fnords!
this is exactly what you get when you have teenage guys going through strangers computers in private.
i'm just mad my geek squad friend never got me a copy of the stash before they left BB.
Most likeley this is even more rampant than they state. I worked at a nationwide consumer electronics store before the in-store pc services were an official part of the job and this kind of stuff was more than common. I would be happy to expose it all with names or and dates; this is just so so wrong in my opinion.
And is giving away $200 dollar blow jobs for $20.
The great thing about that argument is that the defense lawyer gets to ask the lady cop what the fair market value of her blow jobs is. If he's good he'll find out how much her last boyfriend (or girlfriend, we are talking about dickless tracys) spent on her before getting head.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So, that has always happened. You send your photos for processing and the possessor kept a copy.. That's why you did your own film possessing
Back in 1990, when I was doing this type of computer repair, every single tech at every single company made copies of software for themselves off customer computers.
Of course, there weren't mp3s and such, but there was a lot of porn pictures and games. I'd say a solid 10% of machines had a "warez" directory where they'd keep their archive once internet connectivity became more common around 93 or so (common, in the sense of customers with broken machines bringing them in with some form of connectivity to the internet).
Heh, in the people's republic of California, not only do they NOT not look, they give it to the
state at the drop of a hat. California has changed the laws over the years, to define "abandoned" down from 15 to 7, and now just 3 years.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Sure, it's unethical for Best Buy morons to rifle through your hard drive, looking for porn.
I'm confused as to the dumbass users, though. This is like taking your camcorder into a store to get it repaired, and leaving the tape of your naked wife inside. Common sense tells you that you take the tape out before handing over the camcorder.
Common sense should tell you to take the porn (and more importantly, personal, financial, et cetera data) off your hard drive before handing your computer over to some high school age dork at Best Buy.
Then again, common sense ain't very common these days, now, is it?
I bet you a doughnut (jelly) that:
..*blink*....
1) pissy customer takes box home and plugs into 802.1 wfo router
2) goes to wack-the-monkey and reels in a trojan
3) all the shit on their box is p0wn3d anyway
4) They still dont know that they dont know
And the top five excuses are:
1) "I dont want to have to fuck around with it"
2) "I dont have time to set all that up"
3) "bah - whos going to want to steal my shit?"
4) "It's just stuff the kids use"
5)
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I think Geek Squad charges fixed-rates for service, so the Geek is not only wasting the customer's time, but defrauding his employer by essentially screwing around while on the clock.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If I had a dime for every piece of pr0n I came across while fixing computers at work, I'd be a very rich man. The temptation to copy it is great but I try to keep myself honest... especially when I know others aren't watching.
Are belong to us.....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's why you just remove the hard drive and slurp the relevant files onto your workstation directly. No chance of them tracking your actions that way.
"I'm a Laver, not a Phyto[plankton]"
of the porn? had to be said :O
He be fucking careful, that's what
A very similar thing happened when I worked in the Geek Squad, however for me when I saw managers going through customers computers I never said anything cause I valued my job. But when I found pictures of a friend on the company computer I spoke up. 2 Weeks later I was forced to resign my job (well I resigned cause I heard through the grape vine they were gonna fire me, and they were because they had the paperwork filled out already when I went in to resign)
It's never to late to start the day over...
Does this in any way confirm what the east has been accusing the west for years, that the west is morally bankrupt?
I worked in a computer store for over 8 years as a technician. I sent two pedophiles to jail in that time, and I don't feel bad for having found the material. Did I deliberately look for the stuff? No. But in the process of troubleshooting I stumbled across the stuff. I never "backed up" any information from customers computers without a signed warrant. However, here's how it was explained to me directly from the two FBI agents. If the customer brings the item/device/car/etc and leaves it in your custody, there is no expectation of privacy, as they initiated the transaction. "Right of Discovery" dictates that if during the course of normal repair/troubleshooting or whatever you find illicit material, you cannot be held responsible if you report said material. So basically if you leave a kilo of coke on your passenger seat and tell them you seatbelt on that side needs work, don't expect it not to be found. That said what these numbnuts did is an entirely different matter, and as such they should be punished to the fullest. This is a deliberate act of searching out and obtaining information outside the scope needed to do the job. Rule of thumb is don't leave something on you don't want found.
No, it's actually more like you took your car in for some work and the mechanic, while he was wiating for the air conditioning pump to pull a recharge vacuum, occupied himself by thumbing through the stack of magazines you left laying on the back seat.
It's not plunder, it's booty!
Make a script that formats any inserted thumb-drive!
Why?
Because it means more business for me. People and businesses come to me for three main reasons:
1) I can resolve their computer problems with minimal data loss.
2) I charge half what the competition charges.
3) My reputation for honesty and integrity is well known and easily verified.
My clients know that resolving their problems is my ONLY motivation. The only things on their hard drive that I'm concerned with are viruses, spyware, adware, and malfunctioning OS/program components. That's IT. They know they can trust me with their computers and that I will be there for them the next time they need me. And they're more than happy to refer me to their family, friends, and business associates.
So, keep up the good work, Geek Squad! Keep rifling through your customers' hard drives! Keep charging those rates to dress up your employees in those fancy suits and to have them drive around in those cute little cars. I truly appreciate the constant flow of business out of your doors and into mine.
Old Dilbert cartoon.
They should have set their sights for a life a little higher then having the biggest porn collection.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What he found after breaking in does not justify him breaking in! I agree that he should have reported those abuse images to the authorities, but in general, ex post facto justifications are almost never good:
"so I did kill the guy, but he turned out to be a child molester" -- Should you be going around killing people in the hopes you eventually catch one?
"so I raped that girl, but she liked me in the end" -- should you be going around... you get the point I think.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Or mebbee Freak Squad?
Yo... The photo processor at Thrifty and Walgreens been lookin' at your stray pookie shots for some tyme now, my brother.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is a problem? How did the customers get most of it? They wouldn't complain if the Agent in question were just another bittorrent leech. Calling this "stealing" and freaking out about it is basically a bunch of potheads turning narc.
They were charged $29.99 to install iTunes.
Not to scan for viruses, load an OS, install a hard drive or anything like that... but to go to apple.com/itunes, click "download", run, next, next, finish, shutdown.
They had to take the time to grab porn and stuff so it looked like it actually took more than 2 minutes to make their 30 bucks.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
IMO the definition of stealing should be that of taking something for one's self and -- in so doing -- depriving the previous holder of that something *against the previous holder's will*. For example, if someone tells me, "I want you to get rid of the furniture in this house, as I don't want the furniture anymore" and I take all the furniture and put it in my house, have I stolen? If the owner specifically said, "And don't do anything with it other than destroy it", I'd certainly be violating his wishes and (to whatever extent contractually enforceable) violating the law... but I don't think the particular crime would be stealing. Probably something more like "misappropriation". I admit it's kind of a gray area, but given that it's gray I come down on the "it's not stealing" side, since the term "stealing" has been so abused by the MAFIAA.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
That's just one of the fringe benefits of being a PC repair tech. The golden stuff is when you come across home-made pr0n from a hotty that needs Windows reinstalled ;).
It's ok, just say it was in the name of stopping terrorism and you're golden. It works for the president right?
I was working in a PC shop selling and fixing h/w. There's this cute girl whose desktop was on the blink and she left it with us to fix. We set it up in our technician's area. She's got all these very irresistibly cute pictures of herself set up as the screensaver. I've caught myself, the others and some male customers losing lots of productive time just gazing at those pics.
...
I tried to hit it off with her but things never developed beyond a certain point. She wasn't that into me, I think. La amour
Sryn
excellent, you compared copying data with rape.
Well done.
Yes, you stated exactly what I said, and which was visible in plain sight even in the original post. And I then replied to you giving a summary of the thread so far.
How cute.
Assume you had a sexually explicit picture of yourself / significant other. Then assume someone scanned it and published it on a large web site for everyone in the world to see.
Would you be angry because
1) they "stole" your work?
2) they violated your privacy?
Privacy and copyright are two entirely different issues. Both have issues in the digital age, though.
I lost my sig.
Best Buy is Terrible.
Ah, stealing from just one dude might give an unsatisfying porn experience.
However, getting a gang of nerds to scour homes, getting porn here, and getting porn there eventually adds up into what I term the GIANT CONGLOMERATION OF POOOOOOORRRRNNNNN (GCoP)
Eventually the gang of nerds will have tera-bytes and tera-bytes of hardcore "Im gonna shove it somewhere it shouldn't go" goodness.
Sure that belonged to a little girl?
Late at night, "daddy" might play the game while wearing his schoolgirl uniform.
You show me someone who is shocked by the revelation that a technician is looking at their personal files, and I'll show you a woefully naive idiot. I'm not saying its right, I'm not saying its ethical, and I'm not saying its okay. But I am saying that I'd bet money that in any service similar to Geek Squad (Firedog, etc), its done, and done regularly. Now, I'm not saying they all take anything for their own use, and in fact most probably don't. But I guarantee they all look. And that goes for the girls too, not just the guys.
And further, I won't even claim that I don't do it myself. In fact, I warn new clients straight up that if there are any files they really don't want me to see, they should remove them, and if I find obvious hording of kiddie porn on their machine (I'll try to give them benefit of the doubt if its only a few images in the cache or if its obvious that their machine has been owned), I will immediately shut down the computer and my next phone call will be to the county prosecutor's office. Thankfully, that's only happened once.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
What we know is this: the guys at the Consumerist stopped after they found 1 case. Hardly a big deal.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
For all those acting like this is something new, it's not. I remember 10 years ago working at a Comp USA, and the first thing the techs would do when getting the computer is search media to see what goodies the person had on it. Also just a note, but I worked in returns and wasn't part of this besides every now and then being called over when they found something really good. Just make sure you encrypt your personal stuff before you bring it to anyone to fix it. Or better yet learn to fix it yourself, because desktop support, especially these days is a snap.
If that's Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri in the photo, I'd be handing the computer off to the next guy. I'm not gonna whacked over stealing some wiseguy's pr0n or music files.
Given the low morals people expect of Geek Squad and Best Buy -- what does this portend for the ISP, Speakeasy that (for some odd reason) Best Buy purchased not long ago? Probably no good... :-(
At my job I have access to delicate material. In some cases I have access to massive amounts of data that represent and track large monetary amounts. This is the environment I work in.
When you take a computer to a tech shop, they can and should have access to all the contents of the machine as a matter of pragmatism. The fact that they copy this data in-part or in-whole is both harmless and helpful in many cases. I would expect Best Buy implements a contract clause where this is expected behavior "if the technician finds it necessary". Discretion at that point can be litigated away in most cases and would be relatively tough to prove malfeasance. For example, a simple copy folder; virus scan of the files to ensure there are no embedded virii that could complicate installation; install iTunes. I could demonstrate such a virus embedded file that would prevent the installation in a test scenario right now.
I have no problem with Geek Squad's behavior and the entire thing is smacks of "revenge" when they could just as easily baited a truly evil franchise like Fry's. It's really the pricing that keeps me from going to Geek Squad. They screw you there.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
After reading another recent slashdot story (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/ 06/2111251), I read this as "Geek Squid stealing pr0n!!"
It was a situation like this that led to Paul Gadd's (AKA Gary Glitter) arrest for paedophillia a few years back.
He took his PC into PC World (IIRC) and one of the techies there found child pornography on his PC and alerted the relevant authorities.
Having said that, this DOES open up a HUGE can of worms with regard to the privacy of data, but I, for one, was happy to see the book thrown at him for this.
Incidentally... it was never clarified whether any action was taken against the techie who found this...?
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
2. Never digitize anything that you don't want the entire world to see, or at least store it elsewhere such as on an external drive that can be easily unplugged and put away.
3. There are plenty of pictures of your wife already on the internet. Don't play dumb. You put them there. She's a dirty whore and you know it, that's why you married her. Don't blame it on the Geek Squad guy just because her mom accidently found them in a Google search when she miss typed "Sunday Bible Study" and instead put "Everyday household items I like shoved up in my ass while sucking cock."
Her mom is a dirty whore too, don't buy that I love Jesus bit.
If you have an dirty pictures or movies that aren't encrypted, shame on you. You could die tomorrow--after the will gets sorted out, do you want your mom|sister|kids|whoever finding your smut? Everyone may suspect that I watch porn, but I certainly don't have to let them browse through my collection of underage llama porn for verification. Private stuff should be private. Make an effort, people.
I used to work at Best Buy (in store), and though I had some idea of how unscrupulous some of the people I worked with could be, I didn't imagine it was so terrible. Anyway, it used to be that we would get service plans for our computers nearly for free- so I purchased one for my new laptop when I worked there. A year later, I had since quit and then took the laptop in for service. I knew that the people in store had low morals, but I wasn't quite sure how the people at the service center stacked up, so I installed some monitoring software that would log everything that happened on my computer. Please note that the only things wrong with my computer were HARDWARE issues- a loose headphone jack, and a broken monitor. Absolutely nothing that would require data manipulation in the least on the computer itself. A few days later, I get a call from the Best Buy tech center asking me for the password to my windows account. He had apparently already reset the BIOS password and now wanted to access windows itself. I told him no, he didn't need to do that to fix it, and he replied that if I wouldn't give him the password, he'd have to ship the computer back to me without any repairs done. Begrudgingly, I told him the password to an account I had set up specifically for the purpose of the Best Buy technicians in case this had occurred. He hangs up, a few weeks go by, and I finally get my laptop back. What I found was that, over the course of TWO HOURS, this technician systematically went through almost every file on my entire hard drive, and what's more- he actually BURNED TO CDS, from my own CD burner, data and games I had on my hard drive. He even backed up a game folder onto multiple cds that required a full system install (half-life 2, in this case). This was not only a clear case of poor workmanship (why the hell should I wait 4 weeks for a repair if it's just this guy dicking around on my hard drive), but also of a total invasion of privacy. Moreover, my audio jack was not fixed. I called the Best Buy support company and over an hour or so, I managed to finaggle a conversation with the manager in charge of the division that "fixed" my computer. I asked him if he knew what was going on, and he replied in a very nonchalant manner that "these guys only access things that are necessary to fix your computer". I told him I had proof of otherwise, and moreover that they were going through all my personal files (the scant few I had left on my hard drive before sending it in, anyway). He didn't so much deny this as he did *literally* tell me that I was "wasting his time". I told him I was thinking of suing, though admittedly I wasn't sure for what; I didn't know if the invasion of privacy, breach of contract, or failure to repair were "suable" offenses. He actually LAUGHED, told me that since I had "signed the contract", there was nothing I could do, and that he didn't care what evidence I had. Yeah, it sucked. So I did wind up going to a lawyer, who advised me that the amount of time and effort that would have to go into fighting a contract's specific wording (did it say "might be accessed", or "would be accessed") would not be worth whatever payout might actually occur (if any at all). He also implied that it might be harder for someone in my position as a prior employee to assert claims against the company's behavior, which I had never previously objected to while working there. In truth, I had actually quit because of the shady practices going on in my local store, and had mentioned it on my 2-week notice, but alas, such is life. I would really like to kick one of these guys in the balls.
The title SLASHDOT editors used for this story is "Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn". Now this is just copying (or stealing?) the title Consumerist used, but whether through laziness or intent, "Slashdot" has indeed endorsed the use of the term "steal" to describe copying of a file. (A file that iteslf was not purchased.) Or perhaps by "Slashdot" you meant to refer to the great unwashed posters, rather than the "editors"?
I won't set foot in a Circuit City again. It smelled of old leather shoes that had been left out in the rain. The air was cloying and felt like all the oxygen had been used up, only desperation and loneliness were left lingering in the air. I guess they shouldn't have combined their grand opening with the Xbox360 release. They'll never get the smell out.
Plus, they fire their employees after a few years so that they don't have to keep shelling out for raises, gotta keep the salaries low, low, low! Best Buy and the others probably do it, too.
... when you send your PC off for a repair then? Backup your drives and reformat the machine? I'm more concerned about protecting financial data like any sort of cache of credit card numbers or passwords and such stored on a machine. I'm not even sure I know how to reformat my XP machines. Did it all the time with my Macs, but my WinXP machines.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that such goings on are common at Best Buy but any computer repair shop that doesn't have good supervision is prone to this. A lot of so-called techs are just good ole boys doing what has a paycheck in it this week. A tech I used to work with delighted in calling the whole service dept. over when he came across some extra unusual porn. They did end up firing the guy but it wasn't for digging through the customer's files. The manager would just tell him to knock it off.
In the end what you are doing is turning over a box with a good chunk of your personal life over to someone in a fairly low paid service job. The brighter and better ones were graduated from end-user PCs to servers and called "engineers". It is a total abuse of what it truly means to be an engineer but most of those guys were above that sort of thing.
"the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
Ethics cost money.
Between the money that worthwhile employees expect to be paid and the lost sales from honesty on the sales floor, why would anybody be surprised that an organization focused exclusively on the bottom line wouldn't give a damn about ethics?
When you take your computer to be serviced by just about anyone, they will look at your porn; it's that simple.
If you have any "home grown" porn, they might even laugh at you after you pick up the computer.
It's going to happen, get used to it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
From wikipedia:
a
"A story concerns how its collection grew so large: by decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls in their possession; these writings were then swiftly copied by official scribes. Sometimes the copies were so precise that the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the unsuspecting previous owners"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_alexandri
Hey, these Geek Squad techs aren't stealing personal data, they are just trying to rebuild the legendary library!
This is awesome. Personally, I've always thought there was a risk of something like this happening, so whenever I've had to take my computer into a repair shop (very rarely) I make sure to burn all the sensitive stuff to DVD and cut it from the HD. I suppose they could still dig it up with one of those bit finder programs or whatever, but that would probably double the time they would have my computer, which would be unacceptable and pretty obvious.
# less /Documents*and*Settings/ilovetehfatchix/Desktop/My *Documents/isleofmidgetalbinoniggerlesbiandykeoran gutans.txt
There I was, my feet in the air, and the queen bush rubbing her clipenis on my facial hair, while the raven raps above the basement door of my parents' hut below the volcano
I/O ERROR reading NTFS blah:blah
moaned like a fr3ak Oh @#$ God.
I'm coming to Walmart to return that sour milk I bought for the
I/O ERROR reading NTFS blah:blah
I'm sick and tired of shaving the kids for school, so I agree to the Social Services agent for child protection to place them in military school for later deployment in Libia.
I/O ERROR reading NTFS blah:blah
# wall "I gots to get me some o' that!"
Whoever modded this flamebait should be tied to a chair with a bright light in his face and it should be repeatedly demanded of him/her that an explanation be given for such a shitty job of moderation. This was one of the more insightful comments made in this entire thread regarding what to do with a bad situation that you cannot control (that is, the USA's decline into decadence as every other major nation throughout history has eventually done) so that some good can come from it, and some fucknut mods it down as "flamebait". Mods, please fix this!
1)Hedgtrimmers.
2)gas chamber for roles
3)Restrictive appearance, libel of review, administrative remedy.
The Geek Squad are nothing more than a bunch of crappy hacks. Anytime somebody has had the Geek Squad working on their computer, I just want to reformat the sucker. I've had them tell people that their Internet Explorer is broken and all they can use is Firefox. Nevermind that if Internet Explorer is "broken" then the customer is likely to run in significant problems in the future. Half the time they just try and push overpriced parts on a customer when they don't need them. Ethics from Geek Squad? My ass; their very job is to be unethical.
I've got plenty of babe pictures on my machine already. I don't need to steal anybody else's. Anybody who's in IT should know how to get their own porn and have the bandwidth and hard drive space to do so - not to mention the money to pay for it if they have to. And I don't know who has to - I don't know how these porn sites make any money given all the free samples out there - you could spend days just collecting free stuff - I know I have!
I charge low rates for tech support precisely because I know people don't like paying for tech support. So I don't jack my time up by wasting it searching for porn or anything else on people's machines. Do the job and get out. In some cases, I'm not that efficient in doing a particular task, so I even cut hours off my bill just for that. Clients appreciate that - or at least they don't mind taking advantage - which becomes a problem for me.
However, it is clear that being the cheapest is both not profitable and not respectable. I really should triple or quadruple my rates and engage in the same fraud everybody else does - that they're worth what they're charging.
As somebody once said, everybody is either overpaid or underpaid - and you know who you are. Geek Squad is clearly overpaid, and I'm clearly underpaid.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I've seen this before. I've DONE it. When I was a service technician at a Digital Camera repair Center, we used to find TONS of nude (and often HILARIOUS) photos on the internal memory or on memory cards sent in with the cameras. I still have TONS of photos stashed away. You see this sort of thing in the service industry quite a bit.
6 /personal_pics_of_angelina_jolie_aamp_bra/
Not that I'm defending it. . . But it happens alot.
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2006/06/2
^ This guy's bench was across the hall from mine. . .
Amusingly enough, I used to be a Geek Squad agent. Basically, the general rule seemed to be; if the girl is good looking, her computer was searched for naughty files. (Typically before any work was actually done). If the guy seemed like he'd have a attractive girlfriend, his computer would be searched as well.
Managers would sometimes even inquire as to whether things of said nature were found, and were worth checking out for themselves. Seemed as common as running a disk-cleanup. (And I didn't work in one of the stated...states)
Further into the IT-foodchain. It still occurs, though on a less often level. That I notice, at least.
The bottom line is, unless you trust the person/company implicitly, you might as well assume they don't have any ethics. I mean, I wouldn't trust Best Buy, as a company, with my dirty secrets. Why would I trust their employees? Besides the fact that 90% of the technicians at the three stores I operated it at times, I wouldn't consider competent enough to load paper into my printer.
Most IT techs doing a fix for "cleaning up" a system would disable any services not absolutely necessary and use tools that would have detected this recording process. I mean, VNC puts an icon in the system tray. I'd recognize it anywhere... kinda fishy... you know?
It just so happened to capture an idiot in action. Valets have been captured taking cars for joyrides. I'm not saying it _doesn't happen_. I'm addressing a relative frequency of occurence and the knowledge disparity.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The part I find saddest is that the schmuck had to do it all by hand. If I was going to raid drives I'd have a program already on my thumb drive set so that when the drive was inserted the program would invisibly copy all possible content of interest. Doing it by hand is to obvious, to prone to error, and takes more time.
On a more professional note though I hope anyone that is doing a wipe and restore approach of end-user systems is making sure they get everything of value backed up before wiping it. I don't know how many people who have had to hire me to restore important files after some retard at a big computer repair shop just wiped out their baby photos, term paper, etc without caring what they're doing. Restoration isn't always possible so please don't kill someones file system without a full backup.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
What?
How about trying again and this time, not making a stupid analogy that doesn't apply at all.
You won't be able to, but try. In the meantime, come to the realization that you're wrong and they aren't different.
"You're wrong, plain and simple"
And yet, in two responses now, you've said nothing that demonstrates that. In fact, your responses make it clear you can't do so.
"Privacy matters blah blah blah"
Please try to avoid non-sequiturs like this one, I NEVER ONCE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT PRIVACY, one way or the other. Your mental diarrhea is not of any interest to me.
"Media that is widely available on the internet is not in any way personal, and as such does not come under this."
And what happens when your "private" information becomes available on the internet? Such as when some Best Buy employeee posts it? Oh right, your point falls apart.
Nope, you tried, but I was right, you couldn't get it done. I'm not surprised.
If you plan to respond, please answer my original question without the ridiculous, childish attempts to inject your screed.
But you'll fail. Again.
"No, you asked me the difference between two situations"
And you failed to give it. Three times now. Badly.
Give up, or get smarter, you're simply not intelligent enough to share an opinion.
"Yeah, insult me, that'll make up for your inability to respond to my argument. Oh, wait"
Why would I waste time responding to an argument? YOU NEVER RESPONDED TO MINE.
Do what you accuse me of not doing or admit you're a lying hypocrite.
You lost, you're wrong, and you're too stupid to realize it. Stop blaming that on me.
Stop pretending that spewing a moronic screed on a page is "responding" to my argument.
It's no surprise you can't tell the difference, but for those of us who can, it's pretty fucking obvious.