How Best Buy Tried To Whip The Geek Squad Into Shape

The Consumerist site is featuring a follow-up to their Geek Squad porn collectors story, a feature we discussed back in July. According to Consumerist, Best Buy set up their own rigorous internal investigation to catch the culprits soon after these revelations became public. At that point, of course, employee morale went out the window. Draconian interrogation methods were apparently used, and innocent employees lost their jobs. "There were three Geek Squad members fired from my store including myself. The first two were fired for burning a non-copyrighted CD for another employee on a non company issued blank CD-R. I admitted in my interrogation that I was aware of this, and that I stopped these events after that occurrence. I was fired for being aware of this non copyrighted CD being copied. To quote, I did not provide the proper example of leadership. Keep in my mind I removed over 100 illegal tools and pirated discs upon my arrival as supervisor, as well as some remnants of an internal porn scandal."

Comments

Re:Suggested google search

[darkmeridian]

Cute. But if you're a young, GAY, white male then discriminating against you is illegal under New York State law (not federal law). The PC police have everyone under protection.

Are we supposed to be surprised at this?

[Sepiraph]

So let's see... so you've decided to bring in your computer and drop it off to some companies for repair and data back-up, and somehow I am supposed to be remotely surprised that these underpaid techs would actually browse the data content? First of all, I'd never need to bring my computer to be fixed by anyone but myself, but I would NEVER expect the data to be secure if the most basic and important of all security measure, namely that of physical, is already given up. The morale of the story is not one of ethnics, but one of having the common (or rather uncommon, it seems) sense to protect yourself and know what and in what ways security can be compromised. Surely, companies should be better, the government should be better, the world should be better, but one still need to face the reality of what actually IS out there. My 2 cents.

As someone who does Tech Support for real $

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I'd like to add a few things.

1. I charge $35/hr to people I know and friends, I charge $75/hr firm to others.
2. I look for crap data right off the bat! If I find offending material (pron, P2p, bonzi buddy), well, I know where the infection came from, and how to stop it from happening again.
        a. If a wife directly asks me if her husband is looking at pron, I tell them that is a question for them not me!
                  (both before and after I get the pc.)
        b. If I am asked to investigate a minor's computer I don't bill for the 2nd hour of searching for *.jpg, *.avi, *.mpg,
                    *.slt, *.sex, *.zip, and I give the parent a report of where all the stuff is located i.e C:\system\hidden\momdontlookhere\SuperhotMILFS and usually the kids have the best stuff. (at least w/ music)
3. If I find P2P software on grandma's computer I tell her that her grand children shouldn't use it when they come over, and explain why.

The fact is doing these searches early clearly tells me that 1. whether the user is being straight with me about thier situation 2. They are going to deny it if they are not. 3. Explain to them what life is like when your bank account is drained to $0.00, and why they need to clean up their computing "lifestyle" 4. That I can make serious money if I "make it go away" and tell them it's confidential, and that upon referral, I'll reduce my rate, and they will be a repeat customer!

Because when you fix these kind of mistakes professionally, people gain serious respect for you!

Lastly, when I do fix a bad spyware infection, it often takes far longer than what the customer will pay for. I let them know asap if this is going to be the case. Then, if I have to remove their computer from the site and do software repairs @ home, then a small copy of c:\windows\CD's I've ripped\noreally\sorryriaa\limewire\*.mp3 should be a friggin perk! Hell, I even ask if it's o.k., and 9 times out of 10 I get a yes, or "Sure, if you can fix it". (once a guy tried to tell me it was all legit, despite the fact that they had bit rates all over the place.)

Haven't seen anything good lately though. Anyone got a spyware infection in WA that needs a uh cough cough, inspection?

My point w/ all this is simply that it's extremely useful to find out how an infection gets on a computer, especially if they have a virus scanner and a firewall. BestBuy just wipes it clean and hands it back to you. Sometimes it comes back a little dirty on the outside though (ewwww)