Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Thinking about taking your computer to the repair shop? Be very afraid (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by ailiphilia@feddit.it to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Technicians from overnight repair shops access personal data and sometimes also copy data from their clients' devices, researchers in Canada find. Devices belonging to females were more likely to be snooped on, and snooping tended to seek more sensitive data, including both sexually revealing and non-sexual pictures, documents, and financial information.

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[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

That or you go back on the return date only to find out they refused to repair it because it won't boot without a drive so "there was nothing we could do"

(because they totally can't just insert one of their own boot drives they have on hand, with diagnostic tools and a known good OS installation, you know, like the ones any real IT repair business should be using anyway).

[–] ThreeHopsAhead@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sounds like a good way to filter out the worst.

[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Only issue is there's no real accredation system for computer repair outside of major IT firms aimed at maintaining entire fleets of computers for an enterprise level that you definitely can't afford. Like, if there were more authorised repair shop programs by major brands or a central nonprofit org or union overseeing this, it wouldn't be as much of a problem.