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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
I (occasionally) do support / repair / recovery for individuals. Never do I look into media like this, let alone copy it. It's not really that hard - just follow the golden rule. If I wouldn't want someone poking around my files, I do the same for them. Come on, people!
Cheers
It's not entrapment. Entrapment would be forcing them or coercing them to commit the crime, often with another illegal act. Prostitution sting operations, for example, are often very close to (or over the line of) entrapment, as the police plant streetwalkers (an illegal act) in order to catch another illegal act.
There is nothing like that here -- it's a computer with stuff on it, and their job is not to grab that stuff, it's to fix the computer. End of story.
How about a folder called "Music"? Can they steal from that because it's labeled as such?
Living ethically is a lot easier when you have enough ethics to avoid doing bad things for reasons better than "I might get caught."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I ran a repair shop too, but stealing or even viewing customer files was NOT company policy. We did steps 1-6 and then told the customer we'd keep their backup for at least a week 'just in case'. We also deleted the backups on request of course.
Unfortunately, thumbnail previews and accidental views sometimes showed me far more than I wanted to see. I think the worst was when a client warned me about the porn videos of his wife, and ASKED me to critique them. That's just creepy. I gave her a B- (hey, it's like an accident, you HAVE to look).
Ethics mean everything if you want to truly grow a business. You don't gossip about other clients, you look away when they type their password, you try not overhear conversations (and if you do, you mentally stuff those tidbits into a bag, tie a concrete block around them, and throw them to sink in the pool of forgotten memories). It's not just out of consideration for them, but it gains you trust and respect. It's also just the right thing to do.