If you can’t trust your computer repairperson, then whom can you trust? Your car mechanic? A bank teller? A waiter who disappears into the back of a restaurant with your credit card, only to reappear five minutes later with a smile on his face, because you gave him a nice tip? At least, you hope that’s why he’s smiling.
A certain amount of trust has to exist between yourself and people that you hire; otherwise, it would be impossible to do business. We often choose to trust someone because of their known reputation, or because someone else that we trust has recommended them. All too often, though, we put our trust in someone simply because their business has a big brand name, like Montgomery Ward, or Kmart, or Enron.
Now comes a story across my desk dated July 5 from consumer advocate website The Consumerist (http://consumerist.com) about a “sting” operation that was run against the Geek Squad, the computer repair division of electronic retailing giant Best Buy. Following up on the whistle-blowing “confessions” of multiple former Geek Squad employees, who cited numerous misdeeds by their fellow technicians, The Consumerist rigged a special computer to “spy” on whomever might be using it at any given time, by secretly recording a video of “every cursor movement, every program opened, [and] every file accessed.” They also planted some porno pictures in the “My Pictures” folder, and sent the computer away to be serviced at a handful of Best Buys’ Geek Squad centers.
The tasks asked of the various Geek Squad “Task Forces” were simple, such as installing Apple’s iTunes music player. Lo and behold, after paying one particular Task Force $29 to install iTunes, and upon examining the computers’ secret video that had been recorded, The Consumerist discovered that the Geek Squad “Agent” on duty had not only installed iTunes, but had also copied all of the previously-planted porno pictures onto his official Geek Squad-issued external storage drive.
Following the story’s release, thousands of computer service technicians from around the world posted comments on numerous websites. Most, like myself, were not especially surprised at the outcome of the Consumerist’s investigation. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. Judging from what I’ve read, it seems that way too many computer techs are willing to take advantage of and exploit the trust of their customers. Just think what could have happened if the Geek Squad agent had started searching for and copying credit card and bank account numbers, such as can be found in Quicken and QuickBooks files?
I am routinely asked to deal with what should be extremely private personal and financial data that resides on the computers of my clients, and yes, I’ve stumbled across my share of pornography. Many times I’ve found evidence of porno and thought, “Oh, wow, Grandpa’s been bad. I wonder if I should tell Grandma?” I’ve never told Grandma about what I found on Grandpa’s computer, but, I’m giving everyone fair warning, right now: I won’t go searching for it, but if I stumble across child pornography on your computer, I’m calling the cops.
People expect there to be an ethical relationship of confidentiality and trust between themselves and their computer service technician, sort of like attorney/client privilege. I believe that my customers are entitled to such a relationship. However, no matter who you use to service your computer, you should protect any files that you want kept confidential by storing them on an external hard drive that you can keep at home, or by using encryption programs such as the excellent (and free) TrueCrypt utility (www.truecrypt.org). I really wish that Grandpa would start encrypting his porno; then, I wouldn’t have to know what he’s been up to.