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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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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....."
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)
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.
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.
If it's a RAM problem, and there's no way to tell in this case without further testing, it can manifest itself in all kinds of unusual ways. Random errors like this can happen. Instant reboots can happen, blue screens, general failures to boot, corrupted data, etc.
Easy enough to take the chip out and test it in a known-good computer using memtest, though.
Motherboard RAM-handling issues can sometimes pop up as well, especially if that particular RAM is the straw that broke the camel's back and overloads your power supply. If the port or controller is damaged, it can look similar to wonky RAM.
Of course, we all know that Windows is perfectly stable, too.
Either of those options they gave could possibly be correct. There's no way to tell without troubleshooting, though.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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!
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]
So if you see my Slashdot account start going crazy and posting nonsense, it's not me.
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS