Undercover Cameras Catch PC Repair Scams, Privacy Violations

Barence writes "With help from readers of PC Pro, Sky News in the UK launched an undercover investigation into rogue PC repair shops. As a result, Sky's cameras caught technicians scouring through private photos, stealing passwords and over-charging for basic repairs. It was a simple enough job: 'To create the fault, we simply loosened one of the memory chips so Windows wouldn't load. To get things working again, one needs only push the chip back into the slot and reboot the machine. Any half-way competent engineers should fix it in minutes.' But these technicians had other ideas, stealing photos and documents, as well as login details for email and bank accounts."

Comments

Re:Criminals Caught as a Result

[Darkness404]

Depends what you mean by "good". Especially when CP can be -anything-, heck even some forms of cartoons can be labeled as CP. No, it is not "good" that this can happen. Whats next someone getting put on the "terror watch list" and not being able to fly out of the country because a political activist had some documents that were critical of the current administration?

Re:Privacy, eh?

[wozzinator]

..is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores

You, good sir (or is it bad troll), are wrong. Your Mac Pro doesn't have two eight core Xeons, it has two four core Xeons with HyperThreading enabled. If you're going to troll get your facts right.

Re:Right on

[anagama]

But the problem here isn't the client underpaying you. It's the employer screwing the employees. How come you can charge a client 50$ for installing a chip of ram and pay your employee only 7.50$?

This is just whining. The person making $7.50 risks nothing -- he/she just has to show up and get paid. If that person is that unsatisfied, he can go out and find shop space, pay for advertising, pound the pavement to drum up business, try to hire help and then deal with all the crazy tax issues, pay other taxes, buy equipment, supplies, and so forth. When opening a business, a person sees monthly expenses double or triple while monthly income falls to near zero at the start. Over time, if the business works, the person has earned the right to make a profit. If it fails, that person basically loses everything they put into it, and perhaps even more.

Fortunately, most of us live in a world where if we really felt it was unfair to get $7.50/hr, we can have a go at running our own. It's completely legitimate to decide not take the huge risks of starting up a business. It's completely legit to take those risks. What isn't legit is to think one is entitled to the rewards of taking the risk, without ever taking the risk. This third group of people can go beg on street corners for all I care.

Re:No wonder my honeymoon photos are all over 4cha

[elrous0]

UK, US, what's the difference? They're both populated by overweight lazy assholes who speak English.