When you need to drop off your tech devices for a repair, how confident are you that they won’t be snooped on?
CBC’s Marketplace took smartphones and laptops to repair stores across Ontario — including large chains Best Buy and Mobile Klinik — and found that in more than half of the documented cases, technicians accessed intimate photos and private information not relevant to the repair.
Marketplace dropped off devices at 20 stores, ranging from small independent shops to medium-sized chains to larger national chains, after installing monitoring software on the devices. In total, 16 stores were recorded. (At four stores, the tracking software didn’t log anything, or the stores didn’t appear to turn the devices on.)
Technicians at nine stores accessed private data, including one technician who not only viewed photos but copied them onto a USB key.
Samsung phones have this but apparently the Samsung diagnostic tool doesn’t work in the repair mode. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
I just use a secondary app to lock down all apps when it needs serviced then.
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Yeah it’s great. When anything goes wrong, you can just throw it in the trash and get a new one.
Like when I accidentally broke the glass on my camera bump and I was able to buy the replacement and fix it myself for under $20, right?
That has to do with the manufacturer, not that it’s android.
Same-same, but different, but still same
I have repaired phone screens on both Android and iPhones, but honestly both suck at this point. One of the first android phones I repaired was a droid 2 and that was fucking painful, then it broke again in a few months 🙃
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And you believe that’s because it’s an android? So anybody who buys an android phone can expect that nothing will ever go wrong with the hardware?