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Woman's Nude Pics End Up Online After Call To Tech Support
Tara Fitzgerald couldn't find the nude pictures she planned on sending to her boyfriend, but instead of just taking more, she decided to see if a Dell tech support call could fix her problem. Apparently the tech support guy found them. Unfortunately, he then put them up on a site called "bitchtara."
lol
The bare facts certainly are disturbing. But the naked truth is that Dell's customer service is just obscene. I think that support analyst should be stripped of his position.
So she took the pics and then "lost them"... but the support guy found them in her email. She obviously sent/received them at some point, and how she could just 'forget' they were in her email is hard to fathom. Then she sends the guy who WORKS FOR DELL a laptop? She may be the victim, but boy is she good at it.
Oh, and of course: PICS OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN
Probably that Dell employees would actually respect customer confidentiality. Would it be any different if it had been a confidential business letter or accounts statement?
I hope the employee has been dropped from a very great height by Dell. It doesn't inspire much trust in getting support from them.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Pics still up?
The only way to get action from companies today is to publish a bad PR story.
How sad is that?
That is the real problem, lack of accountability not the fact that it happens, that the only way to get it fixed is to make the company suffer publically.
stupidbitchtara?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Well, the dell employee should be hanged upside down, that said, she certainly lowers the bar for dumb!
its already dumb enough to call tech support to recover your own nude pics, its even dumber she got convinced to send a laptop to the guy to help her with her nakedness problem., that's be-yond ridiculous.
also, props to mark72005 below, nicely worded.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
If true, someone at Dell could end up having a friendly conversation with someone from the FBI.
If it was only exposure of private data (pictures) then Dell may have gotten away with a just a civil resolution. If it is true that the tech extorted a laptop, then it becomes a criminal case. People can go to jail.
This could become quite costly to Dell in terms of goodwill if proven that someone representing them extorted material goods from one of their own customers.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Wow, you must have had a bad Dell experience to get so fired up you can't even type straight.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
is it just me or does she sound waaaay naive
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Dell's attorney's have assured Tara she is their 'true friend', and will help her resolve this if she will send them a new Dell laptop.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
The fact that he's a Dell Employee is irrelevant (though no doubt the company will get sued, too). This is a simple case of theft and harassment. Jail for the perp, leave his boss alone.
Next!
Not only "trust some random guy from India", but "trust some random guy from India who has already posted your private data to the net". What does it take to have her _not_ trust someone?
They still haven't fixed his keyboard?
From the video: "I trusted him because he was a Dell technician"
Using my amazing powers of deduction, I have found this to be the root cause of the trouble.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
And it took me forever to get my pics off of fathairybasementdwellers.com
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Except, that is a shitty way to live. So we invented criminal punishments to deal with asshats.
Throw the tech in jail.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
People in Indonesia line up for MILES to get a US Outsourced job like this. They get paid roughly similar to what a DOCTOR in these places makes. They can live VERY nice, middle-class lives with the money they're making.
Maybe you should do a quick study on the Cost of Living in these countries before you start spouting off how Dell (or any other company) is "taking advantage" of workers in other countries.
Sure, but criminal punishment may not be any sort of consolation... one's privacy has still been compromised and putting the jerk behind bars who broke that doesn't change what happened.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'd bet this is actually a case of jealousy.
My take is that she got jealous that her indian boyfriend fell in love with that blondie, then made all this crap up. Why? You can see a chat window where she was clearly talking to someone she had some sort of love (or at least close) relationship with. "I'm worried about you"? Is that something you'd tell a company's representative "helping" you with a tech problem?
So she got mad that he fell in love with someone else after "making" her send him a laptop, and made all this up.
How may rupees is a gallon of eye bleach these days?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
M maybe, but even looking at the video still of her at the desk there's nothing ILF about that.
...get yourself and a few hundred friends to star war-dialing the company...
For those not familiar with the practice, that's when you call someone and make wookie noises into the phone.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"Romantic conversations
...
...
Following the initial technical call, conversations between Fitzgerald and Shaikh quickly turned personal. Fitzgerald admitted being flattered by the attention from the Indian support tech, whose MySpace page identifies him as being 24 years old. "He's very charming and he knew exactly what to say. It warmed my heart," she said.
Fitzgerald shared a number of personal e-mails Shaikh sent her from his Hotmail account shortly after their first conversation, including the following message dated Jan. 11, 2009:
"There are no words to express how I feel about you. I constantly search for the words, and they all seem less than I truly feel. You are my life, my heart, and my soul. You are my best friend. You are my one true love. I still remember the day we first met. I knew that you were the one I was meant to be with forever."
On Valentine's Day 2009, Fitzgerald said Shaikh told her he had fallen in love with a 22-year-old woman in Tennessee who had also called Dell technical support.
Fitzgerald later discovered two mysterious purchases on Feb. 17 totalling $802 charged to her Dell Preferred credit card. She called Dell and was told the charges were for a computer system and router shipped to a woman in Waynesboro, Tennessee."
(Outsourcing nightmare: Sacramento woman describes Dell tech support abuse (watch video report), RGJ.com, July 29, 2010)
When I first read the name I thought that maybe the British actress of the same name, notorious for (tasteful) nude scenes in 1990s films. Obviously not.
So, maybe this is all made up and the woman's real name isn't Tara Fitzgerald at all?
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
And for the record, I am not a Dell fanboy, but we buy almost exclusively Dell where I work and their business tech support is top notch. I talk to real live Americans every time I call, and they never hassle me about anything.
And now allow me to quote from the wiki page about Dell.
In May 2008, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Dell and Dell Financial Services "engaged in fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices, and abusive debt collection practices". The relevant lawsuit aimed primarily to highlight and seek restitution for a lack of technical support given to customers by Dell. The court plans to hold further proceedings to determine how much money Dell has to pay out to customers and how much profit Dell made unlawfully, in New York.
In light of the worrying news article and evidence that the company itself is involved all these dubious practices and not just their outsourced staff, it makes me wonder how many other things like this have happened that we have not heard about, perhaps partly keeping quiet in fear of being mocked all over the web by Dell fanboys.
She is a pay-cam-whore. www(dot)ashcams(dot)com/profile/taritabonita
Sounds like a scam to 1) avoid paying her Dell bill 2) get more traffic.
I would agree with most of what you said...Except...
Just as there is little the company could do to stop this, they also have to expect to pay for the damage done. That is the price of doing business. Being liable for damages and being bad are not the same thing.
If one of the trees in my yard falls over in a storm and crushes my neighbors car, I am liable for paying for it. I am not a bad man because of it.
This woman called Dell. She did not look up this perticular tech person and seek his help. She called Dell. Dell answered the phone. They used this tech as their agent, but the company responded. The woman did not have a business arrangement with the tech. She had one with Dell. Is Dell evil for hiring this guy? Not likely. Are they responsible for the actions of their agent. Yes.
Yes, and the Geek Squad is provably safe with customer files.
There's never been reports of them keeping and trading customer images.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I find this story hilarious. I'll never get tired of laughing at people being stupid. Unfortunately society has made it OK to be stupid about computers. The words "I'm not computer savvy" have become like fingernails on a chalk board to me. This woman didn't NEED to be computer savvy, she just needed to not be a complete maroon. The part about a stolen credit card... alright, I'll agree that was messed up and illegal. But the pictures, and sending a laptop... No excuse. Why do we as a society allow people to use their computer ineptitude as an excuse for being taken advantage of, or not getting work done, or damaging company property? It has become acceptable, and this is wrong.
She was trying to delete the pictures from an email that she had already sent to her boyfriend. I wonder if they are still dating, or if he just posted them in a drunken stupor one night. Dell was not the only one with access to the pictures and there will be little way to trace where the posting came from.
Around $10 - 13 / hr is / was typical for the in-store, line-level techs (the admins make less, sometimes a lot less).
Supervisors and in-home techs will usually make $15 - $17ish / hr.
The cap for their pay grade is / was $20 or $21 IIRC. But in practice, BBY is more likely to promote someone to management than pay them more than $17 or $18 in Geek Squad.
This info is a few years old (when minimum wage was in the $5 / hr range). I wouldn't be surprised if the figures were all about $1 higher now, but I don't know for sure.
So to answer your question: It is much better than minimum wage, though not nearly what a competent tech can make working in IT for a company, government or school.
Even if the pay's the same in your area, it's tough to imagine much of a worse IT job than Geek Squad. A typical store will have 6 - 20 techs. Murphy's law makes sure that when something goes wrong, it will never be the person responsible for it that has to explain it to an angry customer.
The end result is that BBY doesn't get to pick the top talent from the labor pool. Those who are smarter / more professional / more ethical / etc will of course look elsewhere.
I'm in no way saying that there aren't good people in Geek Squad, but there are a lot of folks that aren't because BBY doesn't pay enough to be picky.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.