I’ve got a sick PC, and am considering taking it to a repair shop. Possibly a local place, or maybe a the Best Buy “Geek Squad”.
My concern is that my PC has sensitive information on it. How do I know these people aren’t going to view it? Is there an industry code of conduct for PC repair?
Being busy, I told my girlfriend to take her laptop to a local repair shop to take care of a virus. It was returned with AVG, Spybot, Adaware uninstalled. Upon reinstallation AVG promptly told us the virus was still there. Upon review it appeared the shop charged $50 to delete our anti-virus/spyware.
That said, most local and privately owned shops are good places to do business. They rely upon word of mouth and return customers for business and are not going to mess around with consumers.
Just remember, if you’re worried about your sensitive information, that “Best Buy” type repair places are generally staffed by highschool kids. Local private businesses are generally staffed by the owner.
No, you can’t. You can’t know what they’ll stumble across while looking for the problem, and occasionally you’ll get someone dishonest, malicious, or just criminal. If the “sensitive” materials are illegal, they’re probably required to report it (depending on your jurisdiction), but I’m assuming you’re just talking about company secrets or somesuch.
Encrypt or remove the data before taking it in; consider removing the hard drive if it’s not part of the problem. These folks are, by and large, professionals, but if the information is sensitive enough that “by and large” isn’t good enough, you need to be proactive.
When you get the machine back, download a copy of TrueCrypt, make yourself an encrypted drive image (mounts like a normal disk), and keep the sensitive stuff on it. This protects you not only when the machine is being serviced, but from hackers and if the physical machine is stolen, as well.
If you can remove it, do so, and keep it at home, as it’s more likely to be erased than read.
From the Geek Squad website, they’ll take “reasonable” steps to keep your data private. They’re probably too busy to rummage through your stuff, but I can’t promise that, since I have nothing to do with them. I only used them because you mentioned them, and because they’re about the only wire-spread service organization that mentions data privacy on their website.
If your PC is sick, there’s a good chance they’ll want to do what’s known as a nuke and pave where the disk is wiped and Windows is re-installed from scratch. Needless to say, this will cause anything you had on the drive to be hopelessly lost.
A colleague of mine (we do network and computer consulting we are a small company) was doing some work at a clients home, and found some naked pictures of the 17 or so years old daughter, taken by a webcam, obviously from a show she may have done for whomever. He did have to do a rebuild of the system, but first he created a partition, and moved all data over. He was instructed to move ALL pictures. These pictures were not in “my pictures” and he was not sure what to do, but he did move the daughter pictures. Shortly after that we lost this client.
Moral of my story is don’t snoop, you may find something you do not want to. However, watching that blue bar fill can get mighty boring. Encrypt or remove the data.
IOAPCRS (I own a PC repair service). WRT to parousal of possibly sensitive data, nothing I can think of beyond unautorized duplication of possibly copyrighted materials. Ask around and see if anyone knows someone reputable in the biz.
Places like Geek Squad, Firedog, etc often have policies against such behaviors but I personally know of a few incidents involving techs who scoop up copies of porn and mp3 libraries for personal use later. Best bet is find a guy like an independent tech that does regular work for a business owner you know. Screwing you over could cost him a regular gig and that will hit him in the wallet where it hurts. I have 4 main clients that represent about 40% of my work on a month to month basis. A referral from one of those people would be treated just like that primary customer for fear of upsetting the people who are my bread and butter.
There was a case here in Bangkok a year or two ago where a guy took his PC into the shop. The repairman noticed a video file and took a look. It was the PC owner having all types of sex with a local singer of middling fame. Three sessions in all. They were a couple a few years back but had since broken up. Even though it was not his fault, the girl’s family threatened legal action against him; the last I heard, he was in hiding in Malaysia. The repairman and his buddy got a few months in jail.
And yes, I’ve seen the video, and it is HOT. So be careful with sensitive information on your machine.
Oh, and I left out that I saw the video because it ended up being distributed all over the entire country. There’s not many left who have NOT seen it.
Seconded, if you can back it up, do so and clear it off, especially if it can have serious legal or financial implications. Sometimes just the filenames you see scrolling by are pretty damn terrifying that people give me a computer with the information in place.
Safe combinations, alarm codes, bank account numbers and access codes, home porn, seen it all.
Keep in mind that pretty much every PC contains sensitive information. Bought something online? Your credit card info is there. Renewed your driver’s license? See above.
I owned a computer repair shop for years. Every now and then I’d stumble on something. You can’t help it. You’re moving files and you see file names. You’re fixing internet problems and you see their browsing history and bookmarks.
We had standards. We considered our clients and their computer files personal information we were trusted with. Just like a doctor or lawyer.
Later in the day we might giggle because Client X had “whipped_dildo_slave_boy.jpg” and “femdom_ramming_guy.mov” on his computer but Client X acted like Ward Cleaver and really didn’t seem like the kind of guy for the kink.
Porn would stand out on a computer. Personal data - not so much. In fact, I sort of glased over when personal data was on the screen. I wasn’t interested in it, my brain is busy working on a different problem than to see the amount in a bank account, I didn’t care. I just wanted to work past that computer because I had others on the bench that needed attention.
That said, I had access to a ton of info on someone and I could have transfered it to another drive in a matter of moments and no one would have known. Some of the other techs in the area,. I wouldn’t have put it past them.
I was also the ISP for the area so I had access to tons of info. Passwords, email accounts, etc. If I wanted to I could have found out what you did on-line, who you emailed, where your bank is, what the account info is, and anything else you could think of. The only client email I EVER read was bounced mail. But even then all I really looked at were the headers (to see where it came from, where it was going and why it ended up in legit deadmail).
Rule of thumb, if you don’t want them to see it, don’t give them an easy chance. Back up the data to a safe place before taking the system in and then remove it from the drive.
Every so often there is a news story of a guy taking his computer in for repair, and getting busted for child porn.
Seems there were some jpegs on the hard drive the tech found. :eek:
As a general rule, the small mom-and-pop stores are a better value. If you tell them the budget, they’ll work within it. When bringing things in to Geek Squad, etc. You WILL be subjected to the “unofficial” sales ploy, which is supposed to not have bearing on employee hours, but still does (can you tell I’m bitter?)
That being said, Geek Squad has much less time available for screwing around with the computer than a small store with less work, it’s already planned out how long it should take a tech to do the required work. On the up side, there’s more than 2 guys working the desk, so if one can’t figure it out, their cow-orkers usually can.
Mac repair tech here, to be perfecctly blunt, I don’t care what kind of data a customer has on their hard drive, I’m just not interested, and don’t have the time to root around in the customer’s hard drive, i want to repair the box and move on to the next one…
have I seen customer’s personal porn stashes? well, yes, but that’s on machines where the files are right on the desktop, are a desktop picture, or at the root level of the hard drive, i don’t go out of my way to find them
the only exception to the rule is if i find kiddie porn on a machine, in that situation, i will notify the authorities, thank Og i haven’t encountered kiddie porn though…
Correct, they are also more likely to be flexible because they are not supporting 6 tiers of management over them.
If its gone wrong before its on a tech site somewhere. If a tech tells you they does not know what is wrong, s/hes not trying very hard.
If you can, try to find a place that offers on-site service. The local shop I used to work for only charged an extra $10/hour for it ($49 vs. $39).
You could sit right down beside the tech and make sure he doesn’t access anything he’s not supposed to.
Does the machine still misbehave with a brand new HDD and vanilla Windows + software install? If so, send it in with that. Disks are cheap; your reputation is priceless.