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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."

3 of 665 comments (clear)

  1. I'm sick and tired of "I got overcharged" BS by MistrBlank · · Score: 0, Troll

    If you aren't smart enough to do it yourself, you pay for it. Plain and simple. I don't bitch when I have to pay to get my car scanned when the check engine light comes on. It doesn't take much work there either, plug a device in, (maybe) turn the car on and read the error code from the device. The newer readout's will even pinpoint the problem now, not just tell some random diagnostic code that has to be looked up. Some of those places charge up to $100 just for the scan, particularly if you opt to not have any work done. Seems to me that's comparable to paying $50 if you're afraid of opening your case and installing memory on your system.

    1. Re:I'm sick and tired of "I got overcharged" BS by mcgrew · · Score: 0, Troll

      What idiot modded the parent "troll"? It showed insight and has no trollish features whatever. Whoever modded that comment, come waste some more mod points on me so you won't have them to screw everyone else up.

  2. Re:Surprising? by jedidiah · · Score: 0, Troll

    Most people's free time simply isn't that valuable.

    Peons really need to start getting over themselves.

    People don't adequately account for the cost of money in terms
    of their own time wasted working for some employer. This has a
    great deal to do with the overall general p*sspoor level of
    maths education. (same for the overvaluing of non-work time).

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.