Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn 686
mekane8 writes "Consumer-advocate blog Consumerist ran a sting operation to catch a Best Buy Geek Squad member searching for and stealing media files from a customer's computer. The article includes the story with screen captures and a video of the technician's actions. From that piece: 'Reached for comment, Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens expressed desire to launch an internal investigation and said, "If this is true, it's an isolated incident and grounds for termination of the Agent involved." This is not just an isolated incident, according to reports from Geek Squad insiders alleging that Geek Squad techs are stealing porn, images, and music from customer's computers in California, Texas, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. Our sources say that some Geek Squad locations have a common computer set up where everyone dumps their plunder to share with the other technicians.' A related story from a former Geek Squad employee details the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."
The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics? Why are they any different
from a parking lot attendant or car wash guy? Because they're techies?
Don't kid yourself.
Heck, at two companies I've worked for (both big-name, publicly traded),
they've caught (and fired) one or more sysadmins reading other people's
email.
Sadly, The Ethical IT Guy is on the verge of becoming a quaint holdover
from the previous century.
Encrypt it, or lose it.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
All persons should aspire to live their lives ethically. Rather than have those who do be the exception, it ought to be that those that don't are the exception.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Funny)
You're more likely to get yourself compatible organs for transplant by shooting some guy on the street, than finding porn that matches your own tastes on a random computer. Even if you get really lucky, there's bound to be more than a handful of images there that will turn you off at the wrong moment.
But then, who am I kidding... one can't really expect good taste from some random Geek Squad employee.
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All persons should aspire to live their lives ethically. Rather than have those who do be the exception, it ought to be that those that don't are the exception.
I agree with what you said but I would like to make more general and broad term.
Every member of the Human Race should aspire to better themselves. Because in the end, you loose it all.
What do you want your legacy to be, a Brutal Dictator or the next great Nobel Prize winner? How much can you contribute to humanity before you die?
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't call it kiddie-porn. It's child abuse.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
This may be unpopular, but how can numbers possibly be a significant enough threat to land one in prison? (A digital image file is a very large number.)
Yes, by all means, find the people who perpetrated the original crime of your term child abuse (or more emotionally, sexual assault of a defenseless child), and bring them to justice.
However, once a society makes owning a number a crime, it makes it very easy to "frame" people who hold unpopular-but-not-illegal beliefs: just push some child pornography into their computer, or easier, "find" some photos in their car.
This is very scary stuff. I am ashamed that we have made it illegal to have a number (or a photo), not out of any desire to obtain and retain said numbers or photos, but simply because the threat of abuse of this type of law is obvious and has already happened (witness RIAA witch hunts).
And the reason it's scary is because I truly care about the injured victims and want restitution. Going after third parties does not help, and creates a police state in which unpopular beliefs like mine can be silenced through selective evidence planting.
Similarly, felons should retain the right to vote, especially since having the wrong number can make you a felon.
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Also, that bomb I made is only a bunch of protons and electrons. A very specific configuration of them, but if society makes owning protons and electrons a crime, this is very scary stuff.
You don't evaluate things as their most basic parts, you evaluate them at
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way to reduce the demand is to eliminate all humans.
We are driven by basic desires. One of these desires is to ensure that we are genetically related to the children that we spend our resources in rearing. Prior to contraception, the best way to achieve that was to impregnate a woman as soon as she is capable of being impregnated. Sooner is wasted energy (from a biological perspective, because she won't end up pregnant), and later runs the risk that someone else (the alpha male perhaps; we are tribal/herd-like still) has previously impregnated her and #2 will be rearing #1's child, not his own.
The problem with the above factual analysis is that women reach biologically reproductive age much sooner than the law allows them to be sexually active.
Yes, there are sickos out there who create and consume abuse of infants and 8-year-olds. That does not mean that we should, as a society, attempt to cause the greatest amount of collateral damage while bringing these abominations of life to justice!
My great-great-great-grandmother was legally married at 13. Our laws have changed; our bodies have not.
I hope that it is plain that nowhere in here am I defending those who abuse children, create child porn, or distribute and use it. I'm simply stating that creating laws that outlaw possession of anything (including drugs, books, and money[1]) makes it very easy to punish someone who hasn't actually committed a crime.
[1]--If you don't declare that you're taking more than $10,000 through an airport (perhaps only for international flights, I'm not positive), the police are allowed to take it. Similarly, the RICO laws allow them to plant some coke in your car, then confiscate the car and sell it at auction; even if you have the ability to defend yourself legally, the car is gone. Same goes with houses, yachts, and other large-value items; there have been documented cases of abuse of this law, so I'm again ashamed that we allow it to persist. It is blatantly unconstitutional, as are the drug laws; back in the 20's it took a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw alcohol, but we've allowed our rights to erode so much that we even outlawed the amino acid Tryptophan (naturally occurring in turkey, as we experience every Thanksgiving) for almost ten years [wikipedia.org] (1991 to 2002).
I agree that eliminating the demand would make the supply less profitable. That works with all commodities. But you've gotta change biological nature (not even human nature; all organisms want to maximize their resource expenditures on their own genes, and minimize said expenses on others' genes (yes, adoption and "altruism" are exceptions, but you'll generally find a self-serving motive for the latter, perhaps as simple as "feeling better", and the former is usually the path of last resort when unable to bear children of one's own, celebrities excepted)). And we haven't done such a good job at eliminating demand of any of the "vices" that we've made illegal; alcohol prohibition helped create the mafia, and current drug prohibition is dividing our populace and disenfranchising far more blacks than it does whites (by making drug crimes felonies, and selectively prosecuting, we are taking away their right to vote).
And, sure, forget that digital images are numbers; forget the idea of taking things at their lowest level. Let's look at the highest level: we are imprisoning people because they possess evidence that a crime was committed. They had nothing to do with the crime. Again, this scares me because it can be abused so easily. And since it's linked to the "won't somebody think of the children" meme, using it as planted evidence will likely always be a way to control unpopular-but-not-illegal people.
Like, for instance, a rival senator.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:4, Insightful)
"If you're NOT going to treat finding a hammer on someone as serious, then you've automatically given skull crushers a plausible way out."
See how ridiculous it sounds when it isn't "about the children?"
The people who we should spending our tax law enforcement dollars on are the people who are actually and actively creating victims. Someone looking at a picture (or in possession of a hammer) is not doing anything to create a victim. It's when the child abuse happens, or the hammer is swung at a skull, that the crime takes place.
But I'm not defining the law, simply finding holes in its application. I apologize if I have offended you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you for understanding.
Most other responses lump me in with the sickos because I appear to be defending their behavior, which I most certainly am not. That's why I started this mini-thread with "This may be unpopular." I realized the type of vitriolic responses it would garner, and I thank you for your civility.
I disagree with your first paragraph, but you're right, the hammer is the object prior to the injury whereas the child porn is the evidence of the injury. To be completely accurate, it is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. Was I not clear on that point? The ends do not justify the means.
But you should expect it and only be surprised when they don't.
Don't be surprised when evidence from an illegal search by a citizen not operating under color of law enfor
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Anyone know if this is still the case?
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Peek Squad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yo... The photo processor at Thrifty and Walgreens been lookin' at your stray pookie shots for some tyme now, my brother.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Funny)
Umm, this is /., analogies that have to do with having racy pictures of your girlfriend will go over the heads of many people here. Thats especially true of those who think this is a gray area, as I'm guessing for them stealing pictures of someone's wife or girlfriend from their computer is probably the closest they will ever get to having a significant other.
This is also why you generally don't want to let the Geek Squad (or any other tech support company) kids into your house...
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Great. Give me your address so I can come steal your car out of your driveway.
Oh, it's in a garage? I'll just rent a flatbed and take that too. It's in an accessible area, so it's ok, right?
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OTOH, while I "allow" someone to PERUSE my files for diagnostic purposes, COPYING MY FILES has absolutely NO "REASONABLE EXPECTATION" AT ALL!
wake the fuck up, man...
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, I think that is the biggest crime right there.
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The smart thing to do, given that there aren't even basic ethics or civics classes being taught anymore in public school, is to assume that is is eminently possible that your files might be looked through.
IMO, I think that whether this was the "smart" thing to do is the irrelevant part. Sure it's stupid to walk down the street with a wad of $20 bills in my hand, but that doesn't make it ok for someone to steal it. The job they were paid to do did in no way require them to be looking through those files and as such the owners had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
This is through no real fault of the kids in question, other than that they are the ones who transgressed, but rather the society, mainly the parents, that brought them up.
While I strongly agree that good parenting is a huge component, everyone knows that taking other peoples stuff is wrong and you have to tak
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate relativistic points of view. Some things are just not ethical. There are some things that could be quibbled over (grey areas, mostly), but this isn't something people should be debating. It is very widely consider wrong to steal stuff, kill people, invade people's privacy by looking through all their documents and photos without permission, etc. This is not something that needs to be up for debate.
As for the idea of "why can't we assume most people are nice", I generally do. But you still should be cautious for two reasons. First of all, despite what I'd like to believe a great many people just aren't ethical (and the constant stream of stuff from politicians, sports, stars, and other "role models" isn't helping).
Second, "God helps those who help themselves." Just because someone else shouldn't do something doesn't mean you shouldn't do something to try to prevent it. If the cross-walk sign says go you still check for cars right? Other people should stop, but they may not... so you look anyway. Whether you should have to or not, you protect yourself.
That people do this doesn't surprise me. That low paid people who are trained for 2 hours and given little oversight do this surprises me even less.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Funny)
Bush's Law (Score:5, Funny)
Bush's Law: As an online discussion concerning ethical behavior grows longer, the probability of a mention of George W. Bush approaches one.
Re:Bush's Law (Score:5, Funny)
Bush's Law: As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of a mention of George W. Bush approaches one.
Re:Bush's Law (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bush's Law (Score:5, Funny)
Ohh shit! Bugga!
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:4, Interesting)
How do we prepare our youth for their adult lives when they see society's role models, government officials, sports superstars, members of the church, etc... committing breaches of ethics on a daily basis?
-Rick
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Kids' primary role models are their parents. Be a role model, teach them not to look at politicians as role models (is this not extremely obvious!?), and you'll be OK.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do we prepare our youth for their adult lives...
How did your parents prepare you? This started long, long before Bush and Co.
"I did not have sex with that woman..."
"I looked on a lot of women with lust.."
"I am not a criminal..."
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By teaching them through our own personal behavior, and teaching them morality. We can't expect everyone to be perfect or even good, but that doesn't mean that they or we should stop trying. And when we screw up, we have to admit it and try to improve rather than just justifying it by blaming everyone else, or pointing out examples of other people who have done similar things. In other words we must take responsibility for our own actions, as well as hold
Re:Then there is "entrapment". (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Then there is "entrapment". (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing like that here -- it's a computer with stuff on it, and their job is not to grab that stuff, it's to fix the computer. End of story.
How about a folder called "Music"? Can they steal from that because it's labeled as such?
Living ethically is a lot easier when you have enough ethics to avoid doing bad things for reasons better than "I might get caught."
What the ... ? (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about?
The cops have women dress up like prostitutes dress and hang out in areas where prostitutes hang out.
What's "illegal" about that?
It's entrapment when the fake prostitute offers sex for money BEFORE the guy does. Because the guy MAY NOT have offered money for sex on his own.
Unfair inducment if the lady cop is too hot. (Score:3, Funny)
And is giving away $200 dollar blow jobs for $20.
The great thing about that argument is that the defense lawyer gets to ask the lady cop what the fair market value of her blow jobs is. If he's good he'll find out how much her last boyfriend (or girlfriend, we are talking about dickless tracys) spent on her before getting head.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the smell of fresh irony in the morning ( afternoon ).
You act ethically because you hold yourself accountable for your actions. I do a good job because I want to, because at the end of the day I feel good knowing I did the best I could. Not because if I work hard I'll get a "staff appreciation pin". Kudos from employers come and go ( or often are non-existant ).
I think that's the problem with this country: Too many people expect their managers to help them with their self-esteem. No one other than yourself should have any hand in that.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not to say that it doesn't happen, but we don't have to pretend they are doing an ethical or good job.
BTW, I am an ethical IT guy. I don't want to see other people's stuff. I don't look for it either. But some people are so sloppy with their computers they do the equivalent of leaving porno mags or money in the driver's seat. Even then, I really don't care, as long as it isn't something clearly illegal which would put me in a bind I never wanted to be in. I don't think I'm rare. You are correct, you just won't be finding me working for Best Buy or other bottom of the barrel job. But I would imagine that there are enough ethical people starting out in such a job.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Interesting)
We had a policy about porn, if the printer doesn't want to print it, then you wait till someone else (willing) is in to do the work. If the printer is under 18 (we had a couple in my district, mostly on summer jobs) then you had to wait. If it was illegal (animals, etc.) then you better not have used your real name 'cause the cops are coming. If it was Child porn then we beat you up while the cops are on the way (really happened, cops didn't arrest our guy, but told him to hope the CP guy didn't realize he could press charges).
We had one issue where the girl looked a little young, so we gave the guy a chance to have her, with ID come in and she could pick up the photos. She showed up, and the ID was good (honestly didn't look fake), thing is, her hair was noticeably shorter in the pics and she had turned 18 only a week? before. we let her have the photos, for lack of proof that she was underage, but it made my stomach churn.
-nB
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Insightful)
There has to be a line somewhere for the law, but in something like this, that extra couple of weeks should have no bearing whatsoever on one's personal feelings. It's irrelevant. Both bother you, or neither does.
Re:The decline of ethics????? (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow, awesome. Vigilante justice. You must be so proud.
Believe it or not, "truth and justice for all" does not mean "justice for all, except the people we're pretty sure don't deserve it." The whole point of the American system is that a fair legal system is far more qualified to punish people than you and your thug
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Anyway, complain about the big guys. The little guy is always tempted, but when the big guy does this shit you shut up.
Remember when the CEO of Seagate said something about regretting making all these high capacity HDDs only to find that they are being used to store all this pirated content?
Well, how on earth do you think he knew the content was there? His people are violating customer privacy by examining the contents of the drives.
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bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics? Why are they any different
from a parking lot attendant or car wash guy? Because they're techies?
Don't kid yourself.
Is this sort of like a geek defending other geeks here? Everyone jumping to support poor little underpaid geeks in GeekSquad.
So the thing you lack most when you're underpaid, is actually porn, and they were FORCED, FORCED I tell you, to obtain it from the hard drives of their clients.
Re
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they've caught (and fired) one or more sysadmins reading other people's
email.
Huh? Where I'm at we have a specific person (used to be me, but I moved to a different position now) who is specifically SUPPOSED to go through all sorts of emails that get stuck aside for containing any "trigger words".
As to Encrypt it, or lose it. our system would scan for user-level encryption on any outgoing messages and spits them back to the sender. It'
Don't be the anti-spam guy (Score:3, Interesting)
they've caught (and fired) one or more sysadmins reading other people's
email.
Typically the guys charged with, "get rid of this SPAM in my InBox!". Yep, I've seen it first-hand, when they don't like the anti-spam guy they go after him for 'reading other people's e-mail'.
Oblig Car Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
My car has some niceties I have added on myself. While I certainly do not take my car to just any mechanic, there are some (rare) exceptions when it cannot go to my usual mechanic (i.e. warranty work I had done in the past). An example of once such feature is a very loud stereo system. I actually take the electronic toll pass, change, and especially the amplifiers, and sub woofers out of the car before taking it in because I know the volume would otherwise be maxed out when I get it back from the shop. I simply do not trust just anyone outside of myself and my close friends to have those items within their reach. Furthermore, I am also careful, as with anybody else, to only hand them the keys they need to operate the vehicle, and do not provide them with my house keys or keys to anything other than the car.
People need to take the same types of precautions with computers. If possible, back up your files elsewhere (i.e. optical media, portable hard drive) or consider using a network storage device (many home network storage devices are available now with RAID, and are not terribly high in price). Just as you would with a car, take out any money and private/personal belongings and put it elsewhere for while it is in the shop. Also, use different passwords for your logins than you use for your email accounts and the-like, as this is synonymous to only providing them with the key/keys they need.
Best Buy had ethics (Score:5, Funny)
Well, OK (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt that these guys are obtaining and distributing files that couldn't be obtained for free using a good BitTorrent client (albeit also illegally). I mean, sure, most managerial types agree that you shouldn't do that stuff at work, but aside from the misuse of on-the-clock time, is it much different than a bunch of college roommates using a shared network directory for their downloads?
Stealing homemade sex videos and that sort of thing from customers' computers is another matter. That would be a pretty major invasion of privacy and should be grounds for substantial, per-case lawsuits. I suppose it would be hard for a corporate overseer to distinguish between "legit" and privately owned media in that situation.
Home videos? Private diaries? Love letters? Stay out, Geek. But "media" . . . as a customer, what have I lost, exactly? To be honest, I'd rather have a competent technician solve my configuration problems and help himself to my MP3 directory than have to waste time with ignorant first-level servicepeople in a tightly overseen, "theft-free" big-box environment.
Re:Well, OK (Score:5, Funny)
Share your new iTunes DRM free folder? (Score:5, Interesting)
How much would it suck to get sued for thousands by the RIAA because some highschool/college punk snagged a copy of your iTunes folder? They have files with your digital signature sitting on a P2P server, and they only have to show that given a preponderance of the evidence you are likely guilty.
-Rick
Whoa... whatever happened to 'it's not stealing' (Score:3, Insightful)
If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!"
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
So what you are saying is that if I get something from Bittorrent over my comparatively slow link that's not stealing, but being efficient about it (which these guys seem to be) is now 'stealing'. Check.
Oh, and don't even try that: 'But on Bittorrent it's OK since I have permission' bit with me, unless you yourself made the content (and for the love of God I hope it ain't Porn), your 'permission' is about as relevant as me giving you 'permission' to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
Re:Whoa... whatever happened to 'it's not stealing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whoa... whatever happened to 'it's not stealing (Score:3, Insightful)
Like pictures of the customer and his gf getting it on, for example.
That's quite a bit different.
Re:Whoa... whatever happened to 'it's not stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone wants to copy my \music\mp3 directory, more power to them. But, as another person posted, if they go into my \documents\creative_writing I'd be a bit ticked. I'll admit that. Mostly because unlike the music directory, none of the stuff in there is for public consumption. Also, the mp3 directory is 100% reproducible from public networks. It's already out there. Them taking a copy of all my mp3s is just a way for them to save time and bandwidth. My personal files, on the other hand, aren't.
Of course, as a use case this isn't likely, because I wouldn't buy a computer from Best Buy, let alone entrust them with repairing my box. (And of course, I can fix my own damn computer, so...)
This isn't a matter of stealing or copyright or anything like that. It's an invasion of privacy. Best Buy is giving you a contract (both social and written) saying that they respect you private data, and that you can trust them. If their employees root around in stuff they shouldn't, that's a breach of privacy.
Plus, it's a chance to lay down a strawman beat on Best Buy, and who wants to pass up that opportunity?
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So, frankly, I think your hypocrisy meter needs recalibration. Or are you calling it hypocrisy because Consumerist calls it stealing, while Slashdot (often, perhaps even generally) doesn't? 'Cause that strikes me as a sort of weird definition of hypocrisy. I mean, I wouldn't normally call my boss hypocritical for not
Re:Whoa... whatever happened to 'it's not stealing (Score:4, Funny)
If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!"
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
No, dude false alarm, didn't you notice your "reasoning abilities" meter is so low? At that low levels, the other meters go in totally random measures and can't be trusted at all. Trust me, I'm a geek.
The issue at hand is stealing potentially private information of one's harddrive, without permission. Bittorent is about someone willfully uploading a file to share it with others, and then a group of people sharing bandwidth to get this file.
The difference is sort of like:
a) looking up a gang bang event in your neighborhood and dropping by to join the party
b) someone on the street hitting you with a slab of wood in the back and raping you
See?
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If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!"
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
No. It's not the "exact same thing," nor is it "stealing." It's a violation of privacy. It's not stealing because there's no loss of material. It's a loss of privacy. That's it. Theft is dependent on scarcity, and this is isn't an issue because an exact copy is made. Material was in fact created, not misappropriated. Give up on trying troll on the idea that somehow the standards that apply to a scarcity based world exist in a post-scacity environment. They don't, and they never did, because it's i
geek squad != professionals (Score:3, Informative)
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Oh COME ON, man! Get a grip on reality. Have you seen their ads? These guys are practically superheroes. In fact, make sure you take out all kryptonite ou
Re:geek squad != professionals (Score:4, Interesting)
That must be how... (Score:4, Funny)
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(Posting anon. for obvious reasons.)
That must be how they always catch the child porn guys that are having their computer worked on. A technician always "just accidently discovers" it.
That's exactly what I did. Once.
I was preparing to format a hard drive returned to us by someone. Found some truly disgusting JPGs in a folder named 'Family Photos". The country where this occurred makes it a crime not to report child pornography, so I was stuck in a tough situation. I had to decide whether our ethical standards concerning the customer's privacy had precedence, or the criminal code.
I went home and thought about it for two hours, then decided that m
Re:That must be how... (Score:4, Interesting)
Huh? The moment you looked in the folder - you proved you had neither morals or ethics. You turned him in in an attempt to make yourself feel better and to make up for your failure.
You prove yourself untrustworthy by snooping - and then you blame the community for treating you as untrustworthy?
He lost trust because of spying on customers (Score:4, Insightful)
"so I did kill the guy, but he turned out to be a child molester" -- Should you be going around killing people in the hopes you eventually catch one?
"so I raped that girl, but she liked me in the end" -- should you be going around... you get the point I think.
I'd be more pissed off if they DIDN'T do it. (Score:3, Funny)
I would (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just an isolated incident. (Score:5, Interesting)
This wasn't something I ever did, mainly because I had my own pornography to look at and never came across anything even remotely interesting in any other way, but other "Agents" would do it on a routine basis.
Same at Fry's (Score:3, Interesting)
I did get a laugh the one time I removed a Barbie game CD from a machine that had more voluntarily installed porn dialers and pictures on it than I could count. The am
Thoughts from the TGIFA part of my brain (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, sympathize with the perps here. Who would begrudge the Best Buy Geeksquad drudges some cheap thrills? Besides, if they're busy sharing porn, that makes it less likely they're doing something awful to the innards of Auntie Mae's PC... I would hope.
My real feeling on this, though, are that it's all part of Best Buy's sales model. They can get a lot of customers to purchase an additional 120-gig hard drive if it comes preloaded with porn.
Also, did you notice they now sell tissues and lotion? It's all about synergistic product lines, folks.
I've done it. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Backup customer data (read: customer's porn, music, movies and various documents. Occasionally saved games)
2) Copy over WinXP syspreped mini-image, wiping hard drive.
3) Fix partition table.
4) Run through XP mini-install.
5) Grab any straggler updates.
6) Copy back customer data.
7) Delete crap we don't care about from backup.
8) At the end of the day, copy porn, music and movies that don't suck to my laptop and clean the image/backup server.
(In case you didn't realize, 90% of repairs are people who got so much spyware and viruses that a wipe is just faster. Especially with the mini-image (which is just a copy of XP/2k, fully updated, with all the various media players and firefox, that's been syspreped and shrunk down to the minimum (with ntfsresize on Knoppix). On first boot, XP will auto resize the fs to the maximum if the fs is smaller than the partition.))
This was some time ago (read: long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies), but I see no reason that it doesn't still work like that. I mean, come on, it's faster than bittorrent.
Re:I've done it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope you never apply for any sysadmin position anywhere, until/unless you lose that kind of attitude.
Seriously - that's 100% pure asshattery on your part (and I don't give a shit what files were involved, or how clueless the person storing 'em there), and may well explain why you don't "run" a shop these days.
If you can't prove yourself worthy of a position of trust, then GTFO out of this business. We have enough problems with pry-happy vendors, corporate espionage, and the incidental script kiddies - we have precious little tolerance or room for pathetic little asshats who would compromise their own professional ethics just to get his or her movie and pr0n fix.
At home, w/ friends, or at a LAN party (that is, if the others are into sharing), or elsewhere... go for it; copy your ass off with nary a peep from the likes of me. But at work? Shitting where you eat? Sibling's right, there is no statute of limitations on douchebaggery.
Re:I've done it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, thumbnail previews and accidental views sometimes showed me far more than I wanted to see. I think the worst was when a client warned me about the porn videos of his wife, and ASKED me to critique them. That's just creepy. I gave her a B- (hey, it's like an accident, you HAVE to look).
Ethics mean everything if you want to truly grow a business. You don't gossip about other clients, you look away when they type their password, you try not overhear conversations (and if you do, you mentally stuff those tidbits into a bag, tie a concrete block around them, and throw them to sink in the pool of forgotten memories). It's not just out of consideration for them, but it gains you trust and respect. It's also just the right thing to do.
Cuts both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
While computer repair regulations don't exist like, say, auto repair regulations do, at the time I wondered if it would become compulsory for a computer repair shop to search and disclose child porn and similar because won't someone please think of the children.
If you have a safety deposit box at a bank, you're entrusting them not to open it while you're away and look at all the sparklies. If you take your clothes to a cleaner, you entrust them not to wear it out on the town ala. Seinfeld. If you get your car fixed, you entrust them not to wade through those papers in your glove compartment and snicker at that condom from 1974. I think it's a reasonable expectation that you'll have files not related to your problem remain unexamined.
Were it my repair shop, the first thing I'd think of is "wow, we're so not busy right now my employee has the time to search for goodies on client computers?"
It's the home photos that are the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Not surprised at all honestly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh and if they had child porn - we'd call the police.
ultimate defense (Score:4, Funny)
Geek Squad != IT (Score:3, Informative)
Stealing is (Score:3, Insightful)
when you take something from someone and deprive them of it.
If someone makes copies of files they find on my PC, they are invading my privacy and that is bad. They are not stealing from me. I still have all my pictures.
If I have found that someone has invaded my privacy in this way, I will be unhappy but I should not accuse them of theft!
Best Buy is skeevy. (Score:3, Interesting)
A few months ago I was looking at TVs, and the sales guy was this young kid who just oozed sleeze. (If you've ever met a bad sales guy you know what I mean). He was trying to push a certain TV. I went over to Circuit City a few blocks away to see if they had any better prices. I actually wound up buying the same model this BB salesguy was trying to sell me, but the CC guy didn't try to push too hard. He of course tried to upsell my on an HDTV, but he at least had the instincts to back off a little.
Recently I was at Best Buy because they had nice quality speakers really cheap. I checked the website price, and went to the store. The price at the store was higher than the website price, so I asked the sales guy. He went to a terminal, went to the INTERNAL website (the dodge I already knew about from a few lawsuits against BB for this deceptive practice), and proclaimed I was incorrect. Of course I complained and eventually got the website price.. but it left me feeling even more uneasy about how Best Buy isn't the most honest, or trustworthy retailer.
Oh, and don't forget about the racketeering [slashdot.org] lawsuit filed against Best Buy. Not so great a track record.
As a former blue-shirt... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am always surprised when I see stuff like this -- shock and astonishment that retail PC techs aren't complete pros. That's not to say that there weren't some good techs there -- there were. But there were also bad techs, because the management at a story like Best Buy knows about retail sales and (hopefully) customer service. They cannot tell the difference between a good tech and someone who can just talk like a good tech, but they do know that, if we were really great techs, we wouldn't have been working at Best Buy. Other posters have mentioned bad behavior as a natural result "bottom of the food chain" and "low-paid" employeees.
We weren't the bottom of the food chain. The sales floor guys were - especially in the computer department. They wanted our jobs. I routinely had guys in their mid-twenties give me shit because I was 16 and had a better job. I wasn't making more than they were since I was seasonal, but that was okay with me. I was making decent money for being 16 in 1996 (about $8 an hour, I think) and the job was as tied to merit as it could have been. If I fixed computers well and quickly, I got a good review and customers left happy. Since a lot of our customers expected to have a miserable experience dealing with us, it was actually a pretty good feeling to make somebody's day and fix in an hour what they thought they'd have to come back for in a week.
I only worked summers and over Christmas, so every time I came back, I had to "prove myself" again as the other full-time techs had invariably either been fired or else moved on to better gigs. For every full-time guy there who knew a lot and showed me a trick or two, there was a guy there three times my age who didn't know anything other than how to reinstall windows, and who resented the smartass 16-year-old who made him look bad. Most of these guys lasted only a couple months, but every now and then you'd get somebody who could weasel their way into the job and manage not to be a bad employee even if they were a bad tech. The fact is that a lot of the "repair" jobs we got back then were really basic. An un-scientific analysis of what I remember the job was like saw maybe one or two machines over an 8 hour shift that actually needed hardware work we were capable of; the rest were OS issues, software problems, driver problems, or else they were hardware issues that we had to send out to our service center. The bad techs just sent more stuff out to service, which wasn't really encouraged since we got a happier customer and probably a better profit margin for our store if we fixed it in-house rather than sending it to a regional service center.
At the end of the day, though, we had a lot of autonomy. The second summer I was there was the best one -- they'd fired all but one of the other techs and (for whatever reason) had a hard time replacing them, so it was just me and this one laid-back dude fixing just about everything, and since we were both pretty good, we got the same amount of work done with half the manpower. The managers rarely enforced the "regional" policies as to how we were supposed to do things (if there even were any) so long as our numbers were good.
Best Buy as a company has about as much oversight of their techs as Honda or VW have of their dealership techs. They're hired locally and monitored locally (if at all). They can try to set some standards for who to hire (realy easy things like A-Plus certification) but it doesn't change the fact that it's a low-ish level job unless you're a masochist and you want to use it as a stepping stone to management.
So I'm not surprised by any of this, but I don't really hold Best Buy responsible unless they knew about it and did
Hold the freakin' outrage... (Score:4, Interesting)
1. When running an entrapment scheme, a 1:12 ratio is hardly damning of the whole organization
2. Who cares? Was the entrapment author deprived of his pr0n? No, someone just got a copy.
3. If you have super secret pr0n or whatever on your computer, DON'T TAKE IT TO BEST BUY. Hire someone to come to your house so you can discuss your concerns and sit next to them while they do their thing.
Give me a break. Ethics?! How about journalistic ethics?
Shame on the Consumerist and shame on Slashdot.
pictures of girlfriend found on the internet? (Score:4, Funny)
Simple, tell her the geeksquad STOLE them off your computer.
It is not stealing... (Score:4, Informative)
So, with that said, this is invasion of privacy, espionage, copytight infringement and unauthorized use of data processing equipment. Might even get a higher sentence than ordinary theft.
I might add that anyone concerned about his/her privacy shoould use drive encryption anyways, or remove the drive before giving the computer in foreign hands.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Still wrong. It is unauthorized looking and copying plus destruction of data. It is impossible to "steal" data.....
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are you demented? It is impersonation without authorization. Quite obvious. And it is not the data copying act, it is the act to use the data to effect the impersonation. Also quite obvious.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
STEAL -noun
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force.
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance.
4. to move, bring, convey
truecrypt (Score:3, Interesting)