VIDEO: Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn From Customer's Computer
UPDATE: Why We’re Not Telling Geek Squad CEO Which Agent Stole The Porn
To investigate claims by current and former Geek Squad techies (see “The 10 Page Geek Squad Confession – “Stealing Customers’ Nudie Pics Was An Easter Egg Hunt“), we loaded a computer with porn and rigged it to make a video of itself. We captured every cursor movement, every program opened, every file accessed. Everything that the user saw and did, we recorded.
We took it to less than a dozen Best Buy Geek Squads and asked them to perform simple tasks, like installing iTunes. Most places were fine, sometimes doing the job right on the counter, sometimes even for free.
Then we caught one well-seasoned Geek Squad Agent copying personal and pornographic images and video from our computer to his company-issued thumb drive (see video above, or the logfiles).
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.
If our techie readers were right about the Geek Squad doing this, then perhaps they’re right in saying it happens at other computer repair places as well.
And by the time your computer breaks, it’s too late to hide anything you wouldn’t want someone to find, and steal for their own purposes. It might not just be the photos and videos you got online, but also the ones you made with your partner for intimate purposes. Or it could be passwords, credit card information, bank accounts. The only thing stopping a potential peeping tom is the bounds of their curiosity, and how much and how secure is the information you keep on your computer.
We advise encrypting sensitive files in advance with a program like TrueCrypt (WIN) or making an encrypted disk image (MAC, be sure to skip step 6). Or, keep it all on an external hard drive and/or zip all the files and password protect them.
Who knew that when you hand over your computer to a repair technician, you could be giving a stranger a veritable Pandora’s box?
NEXT: How To Make Your Computer Catch People Stealing Your Porns
PREVIOUSLY:
Geek Squad Confession: “Stealing Customers’ Nudie Pics Was An Easter Egg Hunt”
We’re Always Looking For Porn On Customer’s Computers, Techies Confirm
(Photo: mreraser)
Here are some hi-rez screenshots. We wish the video was this quality but it ended up having to go through multiple levels of compression.
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