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.
Why? Couldn’t he just use a live distro?
Phones. Also technicians aren’t that amazing most of the time, if you drop off your thing at the place you bought it they might know the procedure to change a screen but that’s it.
Also, even on laptops/desktops this might not always be possible depending on the bios configuration. Corporate devices for example might have the bios and booting from untrusted media locked down.