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identity theft

Flawed Security Lets Sprint Accounts Get Easily Hijacked

We found you can hijack a Sprint user's account as long as you know their cellphone number, just a smidge about them, and have half a brain. Once inside, you have total access to their account. You could change their billing address, order a whole bunch of cellphones sent to a drop location, and leave the victim paying the bill. There's also the stalker's wet dream: add GPS tracking to their cellphone and secretly watch their every movement from any computer. Reader Jim told Sprint about this 2 months ago but they ignored him, so I tested it out and am publishing the results in the hope of getting Sprint to fix this exploit. I'll show you we cracked into a Sprint account and just how much damage I could have done, inside... More »

Feature

1:17 PM on Tue Apr 8 2008
By Ben Popken
35,738 views, 70 comments

Latest by cdmarulz: Sprint is not the only company using the security process like the above. I called into fidelity investments and said I forgot my pin and the same questions were asked to confim my identity. Cells phones are one thing investment more »

photos

Inside The Consumer Reports Testing Facility

Ever wonder how Consumer Reports figures out which products to recommend? For one, it takes mad science, like this echo-free room that sits on a different foundation from the rest of the building. I was up at the Consumer Reports HQ yesterday for a planning meeting related to a blogger's conference they're planning for June, and they were nice enough to give me a quick tour of their testing facilities. I snapped some 33 pictures with my cellphone camera. Check them out in the interactive photo essay gallery, inside... More »

Feature

2:10 PM on Wed Mar 19 2008
By Ben Popken
10,818 views, 29 comments

Latest by larry_y: I find CR useful. I go there as a starting point for washers, dryers, lawn mowers, cordless drills, elliptical machines, etc. However, it isn't for computers or electronics. They simply can't keep up. And if you're reading Tom's Hardware more »

insiders

LEAKS: Best Buy's Internal Customer Profiling Document

Attention Profiled Shoppers: Consumerist is now in possession of an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype customers. While Best Buy's use of personas has been known for several years, our exclusively obtained document contains several brand-new Best Buy personas, including "Maria Middle America" and "Empty Nesters" Helen and Charlie. More »

11:14 AM on Tue Mar 18 2008
By Meg Marco
162,011 views, 245 comments

Latest by user008: @Kwitch: "We don't think about our service operating procedure every day and resort back to these stereotypes in order to answer the questions of our customers and help them find the products they want." Like hell you don't. I can tell you more »

public relations

Monster Responds To "Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff"

The Monster Cables Public Relations department sent in a two-page response to our post, "Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is one issue that they are definitely taking seriously. Read their official company rebuttal statement, inside... More »

9:18 AM on Tue Feb 19 2008
By Ben Popken
45,581 views, 151 comments

leaks

Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff: 80% Markups

Ever wonder why gadget store employees push Monster cables like they're crack? Bitchin' markups, just like you suspected (or knew) all along. That's what we found when a Radio Shack employee sent us his store's entire inventory list, which included the wholesale and retail price of every item in stock.

UPDATE: Monster Responds To "Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff" Story

More »

Feature

10:16 PM on Thu Feb 7 2008
By Ben Popken
176,343 views, 229 comments

confessions

10 Confessions Of A Circuit City FireDog Technician

A FireDog Technician writes in with the following confessions. More »
cable

Why Does My Cable Company Force Me To Subscribe To All These Stupid Channels?

If you're like most people, you look at your "basic" cable line-up and think: "Why do I have all these stupid channels? Wouldn't it be cheaper if I could just subscribe to the ones I actually like?"

You're probably convinced that there's a huge conspiracy going on to get you to pay for a bunch of crap you don't want.

You might be right. According to the American Cable Association (an organization that is obviously quite biased toward the cable industry) it's not your cable company's idea to force "Lifetime Movies" on you, it's the big media companies themselves that dictate cable line-ups through a technique called "tying and bundling."

More »

Feature

12:32 PM on Wed Jan 23 2008
By Meg Marco
71,111 views, 241 comments

insiders

6 Confessions Of A Former RadioShack Employee

Former RadioShack employee "D" chimes in with a few tips that may come in useful the next time you find that yourself in a RadioShack. We haven't been in one for so long, we're not even sure what they look like inside. Do they still ask for your phone number when you buy batteries?

Note: This is not a rant or venting session. I was laid off after the holidays, and I have no hard feelings about it ( Layoffs happen to everyone these days) . This is simply a guide to shopping at RadioShack ( henceforth known as RS) for any consumer who likes or buys electronics,written by someone who's sold far too much of them.
More »

1:10 PM on Fri Jan 11 2008
52,257 views, 109 comments

Latest by Magicube: @MikeHerbst: Exactly. Think of it as a convenience store for electronics enthusiasts. And SWEDUB, you're welcome. You'll save a lot of money planning ahead and buying in (relative) bulk. more »

porn

Delete Your Porns: Court Says You Have No Right To Privacy When Your Computer Is Repaired

Evidence uncovered by retail store technicians (i.e. kiddie porn), is legally admissible as evidence in court because, "If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents...," the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled December 5th. The case hinged on the question of whether kiddie porn a Circuit City tech found could be admitted as evidence, overturning a lower court's decision. The Superior Court of PA also referred to codecs, computer video compression and decompression software, as "code X."

Police Blotter: Can Circuit City techs legally peruse files? [ZDNET]
(Photo: jadakatt)

1:26 PM on Thu Dec 20 2007
By Ben Popken
14,063 views, 113 comments

Latest by RvLeshrac: @Valhawk: One can only hope... Of course, with people like Blackneto around, we're just going to sink further and further into a fascist state. Maybe McCarthy was right, and it was just his methods that were horrible. Maybe we're turning into a Soviet more »

exclusives

Leaks: CompUSA's Going-Out-Of Business Discount List

We've got the CompUSA internal discount list for their going out of business liquidation sale. The discounts are mainly 10% and 20%, with some 5% and 30% in there. Audio hardware, mounting brackets and the like, is 30% off. Just because they're imploding doesn't mean they don't have some pride, as least for now. They're entitled "opening discounts," so perhaps will keep dropping week by week until all the stock is gone. Looks like for now they're using the same close-out strategy as when they closed down most of their stores before: offer crappy deals and advertise the heck out of it. More »

9:42 AM on Wed Dec 12 2007
By Ben Popken
127,577 views, 68 comments

Latest by tf34mech: Does the closing date of the store depend on how long it takes to sell everything? Or is it a certain time frame and what is left is disposed of other ways. I went to the Lansing MI store and more »

leaks

Exclusive: CompUSA's Tentative Liquidation Schedule

A CompUSA repair tech has leaked to The Consumerist what he says is their schedule for the liquidations happening now until they close everything down after the holiday season. This is in no way set in stone, he says, but it looks like this is how it's going to go down starting this week. (He would also like everyone to know that no one his place steals porn from customers). More »

11:03 AM on Mon Dec 10 2007
By Ben Popken
38,907 views, 54 comments

leaks

Best Buy Porn Thief Inquisitions Revealed

After reading "How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves," another fired Geek Squad tech has chimed in to tell us how the internal witch hunt for porn thieves proceeded.

I had worked for Geek Squad for over a year, and Best Buy a year and a half before that and was recently let go. Back when they started scanning computers, they said they found downloaded music and movies on our machine and we were to send them the hard drives. So we boxed them up and sent them out.

A month or so later the interrogations happened. We all had our turn, and when it was mine, I walked into a room with the table pushed against the wall and two chairs in the middle of the room sitting two feet apart with nothing in between.

More »

4:33 PM on Mon Dec 3 2007
By Ben Popken
75,696 views, 81 comments

Latest by reykjavik: umm...hate to minimize the importance of your jobs, but you guys make like 9 bucks an hour. Why do you give a shit if you're fired?? They interrogate you and hold it over you head as if they're doing you more »

insiders

Leaks: How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves

Best Buy launched a nation-wide internal investigation after we published a video sting op capturing one of their techs stealing porn from our computer. A fired Geek Squad supervisor tells how it all went down...Innocents fired... Liars kept jobs... Store hard drives seized... Pants shat...
The start of the internal Geek Squad investigation began this summer as all of the locations throughout the country were entered through remote connection and scanned for violations. The Geek Squad "precincts" that had bench machines containing serious violations had their hard drives removed and shipped to the corporate office. All of this was done rapidly and under the watchful eye of salary managers who had their jobs threatened if this was not executed properly. My store was lucky enough to have scored well enough on the remote scans to keep our hard drives. I knew at this point that there was serious cause for concern if Best Buy was willing to spend the kind of cash necessary to execute remote scans throughout ALL of its stores in one day.
More »

2:57 PM on Fri Nov 30 2007
By Ben Popken
127,635 views, 104 comments

Latest by Marcus: GamerX: Way to engage in petty theft and call it "a subtle F* You to Best Buy," Whatever makes you sleep at night. No matter how much I hate a chain, I'm not going to break the damn law just as an more »

polls

Is This Playstation 3 Too Dusty To Be Repaired Under Warranty?

We now have pictures of the Playstation 3 that Sony refused to repair under warranty because the unit was too dusty. Sony originally claimed that the pictures would not be released without a subpoena, and that the dust presented a threat to their technician's health that could only be alleviated if our tipster paid $150. After our posts, Sony abruptly reversed course and released the pictures to our tipster. Sony's letter, the pictures, and our poll, after the jump. More »

6:20 PM on Wed Nov 14 2007
By Carey
231,471 views, 605 comments

Latest by Piisuke: Seriously, who would say no? Do people even realize what dust and electricity can do? Well, a nice shortcut and electrical shock can occur easily enough, let alone that this amount of dust could cover an entire Mexican village and suffocate anyone more »

retail

Best Buy's Myspace Forum For Sharing Dumb Customer Stories

There's a forum on social networking site Myspace where Best Buy employees share the dumbest things customers have ever said to them. They range from the "I probably should find another job:"

wheres the bathroom

EVERY DAY AND I WANT TO KILL MY SELF (NOT REALL) EVERY TIME CAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS RIGHT NEXT TO THE FUCKING SIGN.

DUMB ASS BITCHES

To the whimsical... More »

2:01 PM on Wed Nov 14 2007
By Ben Popken
13,264 views, 124 comments

Latest by Lancehead: www.onemanga.com is a great site if you're into manga. Go check it out. more »

insiders

Comcast Mole Starts Blog

The Comcast insider who leaked the BitTorrent memo promises to tell all of Comcast's dark secrets at Shortnamenowitsgettinglong.com.

"I am just trying to help spread the truth about how screwed up Comcast is," the insider writes in their first post. "I am not trying to hurt Comcast's reputation or bad talk them, I think they do a good enough job themselves...You will find a lot of good information here. The information you want to see as a consumer and they don't."

We'll be watching, and Comcast will as well.

Inside Comcast
(Photo: cmorran123)

1:40 PM on Wed Nov 7 2007
By Ben Popken
9,588 views, 25 comments

how to

How To Find The Cheapest Roaming Solution When Traveling Abroad

Having the ability to make calls all over the world is a pretty amazing communications milestone, but that doesn't mean it's cheap and easy. The Consumerist is filled with stories of poor fools who come back from parts unknown with thousand-dollar roaming bills—and it doesn't just happen to clueless iPhone users. Here's our attempt to help make some sense out of the mess. More »

Feature

4:05 PM on Wed Oct 31 2007
By Chris Walters
2,470 views, 16 comments

policy change

Verizon To Stop Extending Contracts Due To Rate Plan Changes

Verizon announced today that they are ending the often complained about practice of extending contracts when customers request rate plan changes. More »

5:26 PM on Mon Oct 1 2007
By Meg Marco
8,319 views, 32 comments