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

7 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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[–] hfkldjbuq@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

That's why you remove the ssd/hdd yourself, or ask the tech to remove it for you beforehand. Even if it is totally encrypted. Also, learn repairing your devices, not worth it letting some random dude repair it anyway.

[–] ckeen@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

That's also impossible for most tablets and phones, which are probably holding more sensitive information on them than laptops these days...

[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Unless your SSD is soldered cough Apple cough

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

Sir your hard drive was missing but we replaced it and charged you accordingly.

[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 1 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 1 points 2 years ago

Sounds like a good way to filter out the worst.

[–] sproid@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

If you cannot moves sensitive files to another storage device temporarily then, people should have those encrypted. With something like Cryptomator software.