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Major Australian Retailer Accused of Selling Infected Hard Drives

Posted by samzenpus on from the what's-old-is-new dept.

skegg writes "Dick Smith, a major Australian electronics retailer, is being accused of regularly selling used hard drives as new. Particularly disturbing is the claim that at least one drive contained malware-infested pirated movies, causing the unlucky buyer significant data loss. Apparently the Fair Trading Commissioner will be conducting an investigation."

7 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Standard Practice by acehole · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seems standard practice with a lot of stores. Someone takes something back because they don't want or need it for whatever reason, the shop will just shrinkwrap it up again and the next buyer is none the wiser. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened sooner.

    On another note, so how exactly can a video file (pirated movie or not) be 'malware infested'?

    --
    Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
    1. Re:Standard Practice by KXeron · · Score: 5, Informative

      The parent couldn't be more correct.

      People discount regular data files as being malicious simply because they're not labelled executables. What they don't think is that those files are opened by executables. These executables are often trusted programs which makes this an even bigger threat to a system as the malicious code can run hidden under the legitimate process and do its work. There's anything from buffer overruns to file parsing mistakes in the programs that can open them up to become a conduit for abuse.

      An example of this is Adobe Reader's countless exploits with the PDF file format.

  2. Nothing new by StefanWiesendanger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I once bought various "new" components from a shop here in Switzerland and after assembling my PC, I was surprised that it booted up with Windows without me installing anything yet... it even contained some PGP keys of the company how bought the disks before me and returned them (and yes, of course I got in contact with them and told them). Well, it had the nice effect for me that in the end I got all the components for free ;-)

  3. Re:What? by Gavin+Rogers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Selling used stuff as new aside for a second

    Umm. No.

    The media blowup is being fuelled by "I bought a hard disk and it had hard core porn on it!" sensationalism but seem to be ignoring this deeper issue -
    Dick Smith Electronics, Harvey Norman, JB-HiFi and the rest have been getting away with it for years but the fact is selling used goods (no matter how good a condition it's in) as new is illegal.

    They can ask the same price for it if the return is in great condition but they can't just seal it back up and pop it back on the shelf next to the new unopened boxes.

  4. DSE = Radio Shack by ukoda · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For those who don't live in Australia or New Zealand DSE is like Radio Shack but has suffered a worse decline in to just another appliance store. Like Radio Shack DSE used to sell electronic components to the general public and like Radio Shack they have shifted focus to selling appliances. The biggest difference is that if you spend long enough looking it is still possible to find and purchase a resistor at Radio Shack, but at DSE you can't anymore. While the staff at DSE are nice enough people they are low paid drones who often would not think of issues such as formatting returned media. While there may be a company policy on the issue it is probably just one of dozens the staff are meant to follow but, as minimum wage workers, may forget or ignore.

  5. As a former employee... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...this kind of thing was prevalent throughout the company. We would frequently be expected to sell used and returned stock without being given any real freedom in regards to marking it down. This led to a culture of lying to customers, especially in cases where it was not evident that the stock had been used.

    Of course, used stock would be sold as new to customers all the time.

    It even extended to returns on products that were in sealed packaging, despite having a clearly posted 14 day no questions asked refund policy we would be expected to tell customers that we wouldn't provide a refund, even if it was something that wasn't functioning as the customer expected (although within manufacturers specs).

  6. Had this happen to me by lucidlyTwisted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, a friend. Their HDD had died and they asked me what to do. "Buy a new one" says I. Turns out they had no back-ups of pictures etc, so I offered to try a recovery (no promises and I warned them everything could be lost). Anyhoo, the recovery worked with the failed HDD working as a slave to the new one. I picks up loads of deleted pictures and felt rather chuffed with my little self.

    "You seems to have made loads of friends on that Egypt trip." I say.
    "Never been to Egypt." they reply.

    It takes 5 seconds for me to twig that donkey-boy here had done the recovery on the wrong HDD and more stuff was still being found. School reports, banking spreadsheets, tonnes of stuff. Not really what one expects to find on a "new" HDD. Once I had the pictures recovered from the correct drive (and backed-up) my friend took the "new" HDD back to the shop for a bit of a word.

    Selling hooky equipment to a police officer? Not one of the storekeeper's greatest ideas. And for the previous owner, there was enough information on there for someone to do them serious ill. Luckily for them, my friend made the storekeeper physically destroy the drive (and got a full refund).

    There's no issue with selling 2nd hand kit, just advertise it as such and make sure it's properly wiped first.