Consumerist.com’s Geek Squad sting operation caught a Geek Squad agent taking porn from their computer. They rigged a computer to make a video of itself, capturing every cursor movement, and every file accessed. Who knew that when you hand over your computer to a repair technician, you could be giving a stranger a veritable Pandora’s box?
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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February 17, 2008 at 3:05 am
The poor kid should know to disable unnecessary processes before starting work. It takes longer to do things when you’ve got a program writing video to HDD while you’re installing programs.
And it’s not uncommon for the most virus/spyware/adware/worm infested computers to come in LOADED with porn an P2P programs. I pay some people $5 to install LimeWire, get a virus, and bring it back to me infested just so I can tell them “I told you so”.
January 26, 2008 at 6:38 pm
The Geek Squad always offers a data backup before any services are to be performed because there is always a risk of data loss. Are you sure this isn’t what he was doing?
August 18, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Lol that’s quality! Hope they got caught for that…
August 9, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I worked in the IT dept when I started working. A guy quit and had about 1700 porn images on his machine. The Networking guy formatted the machine, but not before he saved all the porn first.
August 3, 2007 at 7:09 am
@Michael, I thought Monkey’s love porn as well
July 29, 2007 at 2:05 am
Come to think of it, the only separating man from the animals is a love of porn…
July 20, 2007 at 12:44 am
Or, you could just get a Mac. They don’t break (therefore, you never have to hand them over to random peeps to get fixed).
July 10, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Wow, I wonder if this has hurt their buisness by any means? Because this video sure has gotten around!
July 10, 2007 at 1:38 pm
never going to hand over my laptop to anybody
July 9, 2007 at 11:22 am
Busted….. I love it.
July 8, 2007 at 3:46 pm
LOL, that really didn’t surprise me at all. The IT man at our job stayed on porn sites all day. One day when he was off the owners son was on his computer for some reason and our IT guy didn’t even clear his history and 90% of the sites he went too was porn. I mean how are you going to be an IT guy and don’t have common sense to clear the sites you’ve visit.
July 8, 2007 at 11:33 am
My bro finds porn on city officials computers all the time. He has to delete it since they are city property.
July 8, 2007 at 9:32 am
I think it is only human nature. But it makes me nervous if they would swipe something that is actually important like business folders or financial info.
July 7, 2007 at 8:58 am
Thank heavens I can fix things myself or else my collection . . . I mean, that’s awful!
July 7, 2007 at 2:06 am
You only have to watch the local news to understand that the PD has geeks and computer shops sniff out the kiddie porn on customers computers.
We already know the photo lab techs look at, and share your pics with everyone else, what makes some people think a geek wouldn’t swipe their porn?
July 7, 2007 at 12:01 am
“Who knew that when you hand over your computer to a repair technician, you could be giving a stranger a veritable Pandora’s box?”
Who did not know that?
July 6, 2007 at 8:03 pm
I always assume techs will see everything on my computer. It’s a fact of life when you send your most personal device to someone you don’t know.
July 6, 2007 at 5:34 pm
A few years ago, a motivational speaker got busted with kiddy P 0rn after droping his laptop off for a service. In that case the snooping was a good thing, but I was shocked the guy didn’t think the techs would go through his files. Again, this issue is so common sense.
July 6, 2007 at 10:03 am
The real theft happened when he got billed $29 to install itunes
July 6, 2007 at 8:11 am
I’d probably have a little look-see, too, but I don’t think I’d go as far as copying the files.
July 6, 2007 at 7:48 am
This is almost as funny as the comcast guy who got caught sleeping on the job. Of course they’ll come out and say it was a “rogue employee” and they’ve been fired…happens all the time.
July 6, 2007 at 6:47 am
spankit city
July 6, 2007 at 6:46 am
speaking first hand vijay???
July 6, 2007 at 6:44 am
Although it is human nature, this guy was on the clock. You could dismiss curiosity if it was just some guy fixing a friends computer but geek was on the clock and being paid to do a job, not look at porn.
July 6, 2007 at 2:53 am
I know I’d hate my picture to be on some geek’s desktop — unless he was my boyfriend then that’s OK.
July 6, 2007 at 2:46 am
I take my stuff for repair assuming the technicians are going to snoop around and “violate” my privacy. Of course I hope they don’t, but then you never really know what happens when they take it to the back room. Not everyone can plant a bugging device on their computers when they send them out for repairs.
July 6, 2007 at 12:46 am
This doesn’t surprise me. Employees really don’t have much of an incentive to be honest, and I doubt if this person loses his/her job. This person is probably stuck in a “dead end” job and could care less about what happens if he/she gets caught. If you think about it, we’re lucky that anything works the way it is supposed to when we understand that these people really have no incentive to help us.
July 5, 2007 at 11:49 pm
This is really great, I always wondered what went on once someone hands their computer over. It was obvious something occasionally had to happen, but video footage… that’s priceless.
July 5, 2007 at 11:32 pm
That’s a steal!
July 5, 2007 at 11:32 pm
We do it at Circuit City as well
July 5, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Haha that’s awesome video.
Of course this is what they do.
July 5, 2007 at 9:33 pm
i bet this is just a fake thing to just get traffic from people..
July 5, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I never liked those guys anyway. It just goes to show some people can not resist sultry temptation.
July 5, 2007 at 9:06 pm
You don’t need to surprise for it…
July 5, 2007 at 8:35 pm
The tough spot for this is if your computer crashes and needs service. At that point it’s too late to encrypt content on your HD.
July 5, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Think thats bad? How about repair men stealing and ripping off customers? http://youtube.com/watch?v=Hxqx4hgeKgQ
July 5, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Wow talk about invasion… but as with anything else if it isn’t locked down people try to take it. As they figure you won’t ever know. but it’s a shame there is very little trust out there anymore due to things like this.
July 5, 2007 at 8:04 pm
What do people expect? Human nature. If you have a folder like that sitting right on your desktop nine times out of ten anyone would look.
July 5, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Wow that sucks.
When the guy came over to install my internet connection, to test whether he got it right, instead of just typing in ebay or something, he went immediately to my Favorites.
I was kind of pissed even for that. (Maybe they have to do that, I really don’t know).
He also seemed disappointed not to find any porn. Almost like “Why do you even have a computer?”
July 5, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Wow, $29 to install intunes
July 5, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Damn Geeks and their pervesions
July 5, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Yea, same here and I wonder if Circuit City will use this against them
July 5, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I used to work at a computer place and I saw stuff like this happen all the time. I’m not in the least bit surprised.
July 5, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Yeah, what do you expect. You leave a folder of pr0n on the desktop and hand it over to a geek and of course they are going to take a look
July 5, 2007 at 5:10 pm
LOL wow that is so funny. Wonder what best buy will have to say about this.
July 5, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I’ve always assumed these tech guys were doing that sort of thing. Kinda a common sense issue, imo.
Last time my computer crashed I took it in to a shop and I assumed they looked through my files.
Maybe it’s best to pay the extra money and have them come to your home to work on your computer if possible. My next service will be done this way, and i’ll be sitting right in my office while they’re doing their thing.
July 5, 2007 at 4:44 pm
this post just made me place all
mine“my friends” on a zip drive… thanxJuly 5, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Maybe I still do have some innocence left in me. I never imagined they would bother. I hear it’s not terribly difficult to find porn on the net. What would be worrisome would be to see them digging around for credit card info or passwords.
July 5, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Your all sickos!
July 5, 2007 at 4:35 pm
What can I say… when I worked at Circuit City a few years ago we looked through pr0n all the time. What do you expect? It’s interesting.
July 5, 2007 at 4:25 pm
a true geek!
July 5, 2007 at 4:11 pm
It is tough to walk away from the porn…especially if your are a geek.
Vijay
July 5, 2007 at 4:08 pm
LOL, if this surprises anyone you need to get out more. Who would take their PC in with videos like that on it anyway and expect no one would look for it. If I worked there, I would look for videos too, what else is there to do all day working your minimum wage job? It’s not like the videos on the guys PC wasn’t already stolen in the first place…
July 5, 2007 at 4:07 pm
LOL, if this surprises anyone you need to get out more. Who would take their PC in with Porn on it anyway and expect no one would look for it. If I worked there, I would look for porn too, what else is there to do all day working your minimum wage job? It’s not like the porn on the guys PC wasn’t already stolen in the first place…
July 5, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Haven’t watched the clip yet, but the concept of a tech ripping off porn is is hardly surprising, considering that every time I see a story in the paper about someone getting busted for illegal porn (ie. kiddy) it’s not due to some brilliant police investigation, it’s because some computer tech working on a machine ’stumbled’ across it.. (Which makes me wonder if they’re not deliberately looking for porn, I know I hide mine pretty good on my comp, I can only imagine the lengths the real pervs take to hide the illegal stuff…)
July 5, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Oh, and if you have anything you want protected, you have to encrypt it before you hand it over to a random person.
July 5, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Can’t say I’m really surprised…
July 5, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Wow. Talk about an invasion of privacy. I hope they got fired. Some major content theft. Espically if you had something that is considered copyright.