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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."
really?
So stealing homemade movies is an invasion of privacy, but prowling through everything to find them in the first place isn't. Got it.
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.
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
fill your hard drive with goatse
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?
Wow! Only 9 posts till Bush is dragged into this thread.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Forget about ethics, WTF was that guy doing stealing some other guys porn?
You're more likely to get yourself compatible organs for transplant by shooting some guy on the street, than finding porn that matches your own tastes on a random computer. Even if you get really lucky, there's bound to be more than a handful of images there that will turn you off at the wrong moment.
But then, who am I kidding... one can't really expect good taste from some random Geek Squad employee.
- These characters were randomly selected.
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.
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
It could be worse: you could work in IT. I tell other parents I work as a piano player in a brothel in order to avoid the embarrassment.
Umm, this is /., analogies that have to do with having racy pictures of your girlfriend will go over the heads of many people here. Thats especially true of those who think this is a gray area, as I'm guessing for them stealing pictures of someone's wife or girlfriend from their computer is probably the closest they will ever get to having a significant other.
This is also why you generally don't want to let the Geek Squad (or any other tech support company) kids into your house...
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.