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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."
I don't know a lot of halfway competent engineers who are PC Repair men.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Stupid geek squad!
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)
This is what happens when you skip over qualified technicians to hire high school students or college dropouts who are 'good with computers' to save a little money.
Perhaps these companies should be sued, each and every one of them, for privacy violations. Maybe when the risk of hiring unqualified technicians is too high, they'll actually start to hire people with certifications and/or degrees for a sane amount of money.
No, $7.25/hr isn't a sane amount of money for a computer technician in the US.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Yeah, people do snoop and overcharge. It's a fact of life, but it's a fact of life that can get you sued, put in jail, or worse.
Add to that the fact that any half-way decent technician would testify that testing the seating/connection of things is the first or second thing on the list they do when it comes to hardware troubleshooting, and you're already deep into scam territory.
I'd bet the places involved would have been happy to sell you $400 refurb 100GB hard drives, re-sticker CPUs, and sell pirated copies of Windows, too.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
While the stuff all the reports are picking up on is certainly not good, the most shocking bit is near the end of the article:
Meanwhile, at Evnova Computers in Barbican the loose memory chip was also spotted and fixed. But the company also told us we needed a new motherboard. We declined the offer and collected our laptop. When we examined it, we discovered technicians had soldered the memory bus pins together to recreate the original fault. Evnova later claimed it believed we were from a rival repair company.
So they catch onto the fact that it's not a genuine customer and they think that a bit of criminal damage is the best thing to do?
...only in the chubby threads...
-- Ethanol-fueled. Captcha: conquered
You mean to tell me the kind of shop that would charge $50 to install a stick of RAM might behave in a less than ethical manner? NO!
I know HP does it. I don't know of anyone else, but they tell you not to send the hard drive in with your computer for warranty items. I myself would want to stand there while the technician fixed it. I don't let contractors into my house when I'm not there and this is the exact same thing.
All tower cases should come with a diagnostic boot drive. The days of feeding IDE and SATA cables and screwing hard drives into place has to stop. The tech to make snap in hard drives has been there for a long time.
I keep a cheap HD with KNOPPIX Maxi ready. I would always swap it in, if I ever bothered to let a hardware tech touch my machine. I have in the past, but only because they can diagnose motherboard issues and I cannot.
As simple as that might sound to someone who knows enough to fix their own computer, a lot of gandmas and grandpas just aren't going to learn how to fix a machine. They need help, and that is why tech shops will always exist, and while there are plenty of legit operations, there are always going to be a few bad apples. I would personally be out of work if everyone knew how to fix their own machine. It's like saying "If you don't want a mechanic to overcharge you, learn to fix your own car", which is good advice, but to be realistic, I don't have the time to spend pouring over a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am manual when I need my car up and running in a day.
Too bad there are companies like this out there, when i stopped working for a PC repair shop (espically when i stopped doing alot of repair work on the side), I had alot of my old customers ask me if they should keep taking their systems back to the same shop, or to another shop. The best advice i could give them for hardware related problems was to tell whoever was fixing the systems, that they wanted any original hardware returned to them.
Software, always been a problem... anything you store on your systems is fair game to whoever is fixing it. The best advice i was able to give to my old customers for their sensitive information was not to store it on the computer at all. Pick up a couple thumb drives and store any documents, passwords, etc... on those drives to keep it seperate.
Im sure there are more of us out there that have given the same advice.
I upgraded my system to 1GB of RAM which it recognized properly. But after using it for about 3 weeks, I got a "PCI.SYS is corrupt or missing" error on boot.
When I called my support folks, I was told that I would need to either replace the motherboard or reinstall Windows XP. These are folks I had told what I had done to the system including the RAM upgrade. In any case, I would have had to spend in excess of US$220!
What I did was to remove the "offending" RAM and everything was good as normal.
My question though is why would the system work for three weeks before throwing the PCI.SYS error?
Probably saved passwords in Firefox or whatever equivalent they were using. If you are not using a master password, one can just hit 'show passwords' to get em all.
Since most people don't like typing their passwords in each time, if someone has used a particular browser for a long time, it can be a goldmine of access info and details.
Firefox:
Tools->Options->Security->Saved Passwords->Show Passwords
This is only a trivial example.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
IMHO, introduction to PC anatomy and troubleshooting should be mandatory in the high school curriculum in today's day and age, and would go a long way to mitigating the problem.
No one should be surprised, but that doesn't mean it's not a big deal. What you have here is an entire industry (PC Repair) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance. Is it okay if my mechanic rips me off because I don't know how to overhaul my own engine? Or if my accountant steals my identity because I don't have the time or the inclination to decipher the tax code? Sure, you and I might know how to fix computers because computers fascinate us and we like to learn how they work. The average person, though, sees their computer as a tool, and doesn't care to know how to fix it. They call a PC Repairman to fix their computer when it acts up, just like they take the car to a mechanic when it won't start or call a plumber when there's water dripping from the ceiling. Yes, there are practitioners in all of these professions that specialize in ripping people off, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable behavior.
Not quite from the article, but from an article linked to by it at the bottom of the story:
"...Inside one of the documents copied to the memory stick was a text file containing passwords for Facebook, Hotmail, eBay and a NatWest bank account.
Once the technician had discovered this information, he opened a web browser on the laptop and attempted to log into the back account for around five minutes.
The only reason he was unsuccessful was because the details were fake....."
The problem of course being that people who take their computers to repair shops almost certainly lack the technical chops to be putting in a blank drive, and aren't going to have a spare blank drive even if they technically knew how. Besides, sometimes the services they provide are things like installing device drivers, cleaning up spyware, etc. - the sorts of thing which requires the affected drive to be in place.
Anecdotally, the first laptop I ever owned was a Dell, and I had to send it in for service after it was damaged in a car accident. They did not require, but strongly recommended that I remove the drive before sending it to them. This was to safeguard both parties - they didn't want to have to even deal with the possibility that their technicians might do something unscrupulous (and were happy to have the indemnity that comes from them not even having the access to do so), but also protects the drive against damage from shipping (even if the parts are insured, the data is not).
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
1) Collect images of goatse, lemonparty, etc
2) Move to folder marked "Private"
3) Loosen memory chip
4) Bring computer to snoopy repair shop.
5) Laugh as crooked tech's scream "Augghh, my eyes!"
(there is no ???, but there also is no profit. Sorry)
I don't like to do PC work for people that I work with. Just to keep things professional. So I sent some work to a friend of mine who was looking for some work. Initially he did a great job, and several people started spreading the word and got him a few more jobs. After a year or so, I started hearing complaints. Jobs not being done right or slowly, couldn't contact him, or couldn't get their machine back. One person at work ended up taking him to small claims court to get their computer back.
I found out later he was addicted to WOW and that was what was causing him to be a knob.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
If you don't want to be overcharged, learn a thing or two about your PC so you can fix it yourself.
Your comment goes against the very essence of civilization.
Why should I invest time and resources to turn myself into a "computer specialist", instead of using a means of wealth exchange "money" to hire a REAL specialist to do the job for me? Then I can continue to be good at MY special job - medicine - and have my needs met by a more efficient specialist, in terms of time and other resources.
Of course it all breaks down when a) the "specialist" in question is probably no more qualified than I am; and b) the "specialist" in question is actively trying to defraud me of my money or possessions.
It's no wonder that philosophers have been complaining ever since ancient Greece about the value of ethics and morals in a society. You just can't run one without them. Of course you can use other tactics - fear, oppression, etc to TRY to maintain order, but these are incredibly wasteful. History teaches us what always happens when you put a lot of power in the hands of just a few men.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Most of these technician services are quite dodgy. For every one that offers honest service at a fair price, there are a hundred like the above, or like Geek Squad.
Here are some choice bits:
Set up a wireless router with encryption (=WEP, probably) = $150
Securely add another device to the above (=type in pass.) = $90
OS Upgrade and Update (=install Win and run wind. update) = $90
Data transfer up to 9.4 GB (=burn two prol. cheapo DVD-R) = $60
Online console setup (=config router for 360 to get Live) = $150
It is ridiculous that this is the state of the market - unqualified techs charging enormous amounts of money for trivial tasks. I realize that there are some honest, upstanding people in these companies, but the mass of those who are not drown the out. It is sad really, as I know some very qualified people who run a very honest and fairly priced business doing support/repairs, but they are bypassed by uninformed users who run to Geek Squad because 'at these prices you must be doing something dodgy'.
Just an example of in this case images copied from a laptop that was taken for repair. For anyone living in Hong Kong or following Cantopop, just think "Edison Chen". You will know what I'm talking about, it has been all over the media for a long long time.
For the rest of us: this is a famous singer/actor/etc around here. He took his laptop for repair once, and a year or so ago photos of him having sex with female stars started to appear on the Internet. Copied off of his laptop by the repairman who started snooping around the data on the hard disk after the repairs were finished. This repairman has got a jail term for that, by the way. And it all ballooned in the biggest entertainment story of cantopop in 2008, and probably the biggest in cantopop history.
For links: just search for "edison chen" on google. The first top-100 or so are about this scandal.
Much of western economic success is predicated on trust.
When people exploit trust, bad shit happens (see 2008). When trust doesn't exist, it is much more difficult to trade. Trade is good. Thus shitting on trust is a big deal.
And please don't pigeonhole me into 'all trade is good', I am talking about beneficial trade between two parties (with minimal externalities). Or does everyone want to grow their own food?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Well, I tell people that I am outdated with regards to fixing computers, I used to do it when I started to play with computers but now the time I would spend fixing my aunt virus infected computer would make me loose too much money compared to spending that time on my regular work.
So maybe competent people do not want to do this kind of work, I don't anyway...
They have stopped to call me since a while and this is a good thing, charging them more than the price of the computer to fix it wouldn't fly and that is what it costs me in lost income ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
The webcam would have only caught actions done while the system is running. In order to fix the issue, the memory had to be reseated, so, if they did that and it booted, then all the webcam should have caught is the initial bootup to verify it is working, maybe launch a website as a test. However, it caught something more than that. They are basing the issue resolution based off when the system was shut down, when they took it in, and when it successfully booted teh first time after sending it in it seems, so that part tells us the issue was quickly resolved. Then, once issue resolution was confirmed, the webcam caught the company red handed.
I hope that you are also an expert in fixing... cars, plumbing, roofs, TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines; all of which I garauntee will break down at some point if your life. Let's also not forget other handy do it yourself projects like curing illnesses, neutering your pet, and pulling wisdom teeth. People get overcharged for all of these things every day. Just because the subject at hand happens to be your area of expertise doesn't mean you can just say 'learn a thing or two' and call that a valid resolution to the problem.
But the article mentions a sample bias. They asked readers what the worst PC Repair shops were before they investigated.
What you have here is an entire industry (Plumbing) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
What you have here is an entire industry (Electricians) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
What you have here is an entire industry (Mechanics) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
Basically, ignorance is asking people to rip you off. It shouldn't be like that, but it is. A stuck seat belt becomes a £100 repair if you're a female. A small leak becomes a £300 repair if you don't know the basics of plumbing.
Read up, and then be specific when it comes to the repair. You might not know how to solder a water pipe with a leak, but you can point at it and diagnose the problem you want solved.
Seems that you're best off finding a local PC repairman that will come to your house to fix things, than going to even a reputable store like PC World, never mind a dodgy high street computer shop. And that's if you don't know anybody else who can help. Hell, people know to check their oil and tyre pressures, why can't they be told how to check their memory is seated well?
At least plumbers, electricians, gas fitters, etc, have trade organisations that try to guarantee some standards amongst their members. It's why in the UK you never get a non-CORGI gas fitter in. Maybe IT Technicians need a similar trade organisation, just so the advert in yellow pages has the logo, and people know they won't get ripped off.
I wonder how many times he got away with this, taking the extra cash for himself. I reported the scam to his boss, but the boss wasn't very excited about it. He was probably in on the scam, too. Heck, it was probably his idea. Most office customers wouldn't know 2G RAM from a RAID array. Just another example of the sort of automatic fraud from vendors that you have to constantly be aware of in China (and elsewhere).
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Perhaps if you stopped forgetting things, you wouldn't have to learn as much.
rewriting history since 2109
Mod me "troll" if you want but there is nothing magical about computers. If someone feels it's not worth their time and effort to learn how computers work, that's their prerogative. But, when they make the choice to remain ignorant, they need to man up and accept that this is going to cost them. They will be at the complete mercy of people who made the effort to understand how these devices work.
Heck, I can tear down an engine and rebuild it if I want but I choose to pay other people to do that kind of work for me. The fact that I understand how engines work gives me the ability to screen mechanics and find one who won't rip me off. One who will just do the work that needs to be done and charge for the true value of that work.
I honestly can't comprehend people who don't take the time to learn how things work. These days, most white collar jobs require extensive use of computers. People rely on these devices to feed their families and put a roof over their heads yet they make no effort to understand how they work. It's ... I have no words. I just don't understand how people can be content to live in a fog of ignorance.
It's like saying "If you don't want a mechanic to overcharge you, learn to fix your own car", which is good advice, but to be realistic, I don't have the time to spend pouring over a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am manual when I need my car up and running in a day.
I think you misunderstand how this works. I have enough knowledge about car exhausts not to get ripped off. They are not going to sell me frequency grease or some BS, plus I have a vague idea of how much time and money it should take, and an excellent idea of exactly what is broken and what I need them to fix. Given my knowledge, I am extremely well qualified to outsource to a mechanic and manage their work.
Not surprisingly, my interactions with tradespeople in general are pretty positive.
Someone whom takes a more dilbertian approach toward management is going to be screwed over by their mechanic, sooner or later. Its not necessarily even "screwed over" so much as utterly clueless expectations. Consider people whom proudly declare how totally clueless they are about mechanical things, but suddenly become experts on the topic when its time to discuss prices, or start arguing when they hear something they don't want to hear.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.'
This isn't as bad as some of these "exposes" they run on PC repair shops, but I would dispute it should take minutes to fix. For a start, you need to open the case first, which you're probably not going to do until you've tried to see if you can solve the problem without opening the case (maybe it's a BIOS or OS problem). It's not like checking the ram is seated properly is the first thing you'd check and it's not like the BIOS will come up with a "RAMs not seated properly" message.
I remember another similar set up a while back where they'd plugged the IDE cable in backwards. Again, if somebody brings in a computer that has stopped working, the first thing you think of is not going to be that the IDE cable has magically turned itself backwards again.
Having said all that, let me make it clear that these people (the PC repair people) are still scumbags. I had a computer from BestBuy that was still under warranty that had damage to the power supply and motherboard (you could see the burn marks on the connectors). BestBuy's Geek Squad tried to tell me that I had a virus and need to buy their anti-virus.
You RTFA. They selected the shops with the worst reputations to try this at, of course the bad shops will outnumber the good shops when you seek out the worst shops for your test.
I was talking to a friend of mine who, like myself, does local PC contract work. He charges a bit more than me and in discussing that one day he started talking about the various reasons he felt his costs were fair. Partly it is a regional difference as well as he has been doing it longer. But the big thing that I felt, knowing his clients as he often will consult with me on things, was trust.
Given that I'm sure that there are others in his area that could do his work for a lower fee his clients are very loyal. Rather thou the trust that they have in him is worth the extra money.
I even used a car analogy. Saying that he was like a trusted mechanic. Since most people don't know much about computers when something is wrong with them, like a car for someone who is not a mechanic, as the repairman you can lie with near impunity as to what is wrong. Or just describe the problem as it really is in such overwhelming technical detail that it sounds much worse than it really is.
I don't think any of us who have been around are very surprised that this goes on. From the moment PCs when mainstream I've seen sleazy repair shop after sleazy repair shop doing the same kinds of things. And it makes it all the easier for me to retain customers given that by doing honest work I build up a trust with them.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Back in the days when all computers were mainframes, a company's computer stopped working, so they hired a consultant to fix it. The consultant walked in, took out a small hammer and tapped the computer, which started working. He billed the company $1000.
The CEO was outraged, and demanded that a detailed bill be sent. The bill came back:
Tapping computer with small hammer - $1
Knowing where to tap - $999
Free Martian Whores!
I have to completely disagree here with computers being more complex than cars for repairs. Realistically there are a handful of components on a computer that you ever need to deal with. In a weeks course you could teach someone with any sort of aptitude towards eletronics how to fix 99.9% of issues, because in the end its find out what's not working as you think it should, open a box and snap in the new part. Compare that to a car where you may need to diagonose things such as cylinder compression, belt timing, rebuild transmissions, and scores of other things. We're not talking Jiffy Lube stuff, but actual repairs and tuning. There's no comparison when it comes to the amount of knowledge aquired.
Don't compare computer design and manufacturing with repairing.
It is something Costco has discovered: They have less shrinkage (theft) than normal. Why? They pay their employees well and have good benefits. Thus while it doesn't mean nobody ever steals from them, it means it happens less than at similar stores. The reason is threefold:
1) People like and care about their job more because it pays well, and thus don't want to do things that might mess it up. So even if they are somewhat morally dubious, they may elect not to risk their job.
2) Their employees have more money and thus less incentive to steal. When you are flat broke, theft can seem like a good option. When you can afford what you want, it isn't as attractive.
3) They have more goodwill towards their employer. They feel like their employer cares about them so they care about their employer. Most people have a much easier time screwing someone over if they don't know them or dislike them.
It really DOES seem to work. Also, it tends to reduce turnover. With minimum wage, you have an extremely high turnover rate. People come and go all the time. As you increase pay, you increase the amount of time people will stay with you. The reason this matters to an employer is that it costs money to train new employees. Even on menial jobs, you don't walk in and have 100% efficiency on day one. This applies even if you've done similar work before. Every setup is different, it takes time to train up people.
Again something Costco has discovered. The interesting thing is that the two factors (lower theft and turnover) seem to add up for them and largely offset the higher costs for employees. Yes, they pay out more, but it reduces other costs and thus doesn't end up hitting the bottom line as much as you might first expect.
What kills me is that in the article they state they picked the worst shops w/ bad reputations. Well duh there gonna be bad, how is this even news? You don't see to many food critics review places they know are awful? Better, would you read an article about how prision imates tend to commit crimes?
You know, something like that should be at a library.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
While not excusing the criminal behavior, I love it when people create a problem that just doesn't ever happen in the real world then point to the techs for being dumb. What I mean is, I've seen memory modules go bad, but I've NEVER seen memory modules work themselves out of a slot. They click in there and stay. I've seen monitor power cords work themselves out, memory chips go bad, but never a memory module. Another repair tech expose took an old PATA ribbon cable and cut some wires. That wasn't a real test either. PATA cables are not a wear item. If they do go bad, it is a result of recent handling and is detected immediately. While you know the problem, the techs have the opposite problem - their experience works against them. So when simulating an error, please make it plausible.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The CBC did a documentary called "Getting Gouged by Geeks" of precisely the same thing, with almost precisely the same fault - Instead of loosening the chip, the module itself was blown in such a way that the computer didn't power on. Unfortunately, CBC had high standards - even one guy who had figured it out, and honestly fixed it, was considered to be "gouging" because he only had a larger module than what needed replacing - Let's not even mention that they expected him to do a house call for free and give them a memory module for the going price online. There were plenty of examples of others who weren't so legit, though.
You can see it here. Interestingly, Slashdot ran a story on it.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
"Anecdotally, the first laptop I ever owned was a Dell, and I had to send it in for service after it was damaged in a car accident."
Those Dell laptops, always speeding, weaving through traffic, flipping you the bird if you're going too slow. Its only a matter of time before they get into an accident. The shame little Latitude or Inspiron must feel when their parents Optiplex and Precision watch the video of their children failing a roadside field sobriety test.
the time I would spend fixing my aunt virus infected computer
Perhaps you should consider some auntie virus software... Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Ah yes. That feature.
A friend (an Opera fan) of mine found that some time ago, and promptly informed me (died of laughter) that because anyone can sit down and get his passwords, Firefox was of questionable quality ('it sucks').
I then pointed out the whole Edit --> Preferences (for windows, Tools --> Options) --> Security --> "Use a master password" checkbox. When using this, the passwords it stores are properly encrypted and cannot be used by anything without providing a password you select. Not by a website, not by the saved password manager.
Not that I'd expect anyone who didn't know what this was to go digging through the options under the security section anyway, but it should be mentioned.
So if you see my Slashdot account start going crazy and posting nonsense, it's not me.
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS
Co-workers used to always bring in their home computers for me to fix (for free), because as the database and web guy, I "knew" computers.
So I always did searches for *.jpg on their machines. It's interesting to see the pr0n preferences of your co-workers. Some of the people you would least suspect have some of the most extensive and unusual pr0n collections.
Plus I managed to snag some good co-worker, girlfriend & wife porn as well. It's astounding how clueless people are about the visibility of "secret" files on their computers.
I once had a computer that was rebooting every few minutes.
Turns out the guy had installed a 3rd party fan for his CPU, except the connector on it was different than the one his previous fan had, and his mobo didn't have the proper connection.
This apparantly led him to believe the proper thing to do would be cut the connector off, strip the end of the wire, and (how do i describe this accurately?) poke the bare wire in through the back of a power connector hooked up the hard drive.
After having a good laugh and fixing the issue, he then tried to accuse me of being the one to do such a thing to his comp, and tried to get out of paying the bench fee.
Customer FAIL.