Exposed : PC Repair Shops

[Woolly One]

There is a flip side to this - IIRC Paul Gadd (AKA Gary Glitter) was thankfully first caught because he put his PC in for repair @ PC World.

Originally Posted by Woolly One

There is a flip side to this - IIRC Paul Gadd (AKA Gary Glitter) was thankfully first caught because he put his PC in for repair @ PC World.

Yeah but I don't think anyone really thinks it's a good idea for IT staff to shuffle though people's photos/bank details in case they are a peado..

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by Damien

Yeah but I don't think anyone really thinks it's a good idea for IT staff to shuffle though people's photos/bank details in case they are a peado..

Sometimes unavoidable though, windows provides thumbnails in most folders.

Purposefully though, i agree.

thumbnails is easy to disable

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by zing

thumbnails is easy to disable

True, but i just don't bother. I don't care what i see on the machines in the course of duty, as long as it's not A) Illegal or B) Against our company policy (Skype for example).

I wonder how many PC Repair Shops are like the 4th one in the article here though?

[Dai]

It's all the same old junk anyway. The rare machines that really catch my eye are the pristine ones with no dodgy history or cookies at all.

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by DaiNasty

It's all the same old junk anyway. The rare machines that really catch my eye are the pristine ones with no dodgy history or cookies at all.

I get suspicious when i get well-maintained O/S installs here...

[Halcyon]

Sometimes you are going to see things whether you are looking for it or not.
Often if I am doing some repair work and the user wants a complete backup of all their data you do see a few things whther you like it or not.
Eg. backing up favourites, checking their profile to make sure you have all the folders, that you havent forgotten anything, etc.

If I am doing work I always tell the customer exactly everything I have done and will tell them about the costs before I have to do any work.

[Kymmy]

Used to make me laugh when a customer brought a PC into the shop with just the windows install disk and asked for a re-install due to a virus or other problem. After the re-install we'd always get asked where thier other programs were that they installed..

[Dai]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Sometimes you are going to see things whether you are looking for it or not.
Often if I am doing some repair work and the user wants a complete backup of all their data you do see a few things whther you like it or not.
Eg. backing up favourites, checking their profile to make sure you have all the folders, that you havent forgotten anything, etc.

If I am doing work I always tell the customer exactly everything I have done and will tell them about the costs before I have to do any work.

I totally agree. Sometimes you *have* to search. For instance, personal pictures saved by an app that uses a non-standard store folder. If the stuff is not in 'My Pictures' there is no alternative but to look for other locations.

However, I see a big difference between that and calling your mates over to have a quick snigger.

When I'm working on a machine I keep a note sheet. What I've done, what failed, what tools have been run etc etc. It's partly to aid my own memory as I often put a job aside for a while if I'm waiting for parts or something but also it provides a detailed worksheet to hand to the customer so they can see just why the job has cost as much as it did.

I always price in advance wherever possible. Of course that means sometimes I win, sometimes I lose a bit but it's more important to me that the customer is happy. That way I get them back and will make it up in the long haul.

[lucy7]

We once gave our laps tops to a "friend" who works at repairs.
My husband forgot to give him our passwords, we then were not contactable for a week, due to being abroad with no mobiles.
He hacked in and did what my husnband wanted done to them.
We at the time did not mind, then months later in a convo, he said something which I picked up on. He would of only know it if he had gone through our stuff!!

Ex friend now.

[Arthurgray50@blu]

I can tell you, I got ripped off twice by computor crooks, I needed to put more power on my system, and PC world charged me £150.00 for putting a little box, the size smaller than a can clip, and l watched him do it, THREE MINUTES, and he took out the old one and put in the new one.

Then a foriegn shop ripped me off, when a wire came off, and all he did was push it back on. he charged me £40.00

My son in law, then told me, he had one and could have done it for nothing, and he got it off a company off Google, and it cost £20.00.

[Welshchris]

Theres a computer shop here which i wont name thats been in trouble more than once.

He was caught going through holiday snaps on someones system and showing the topless ones of the guys wife to friends of his.... This shop also his prices are a rip off take this for example. Last Year i rang him for a price on a 500GB SATA hard disk it was around April 2008, elsewhere i was quoted between £70 - £79 this guy told me he wanted £147 because he had to pay special carriage and having run a shop myself in the computer trade i knew he was talking rubbish and i said to him Jesus, what u doing bringing it down via Royal Appointment, im gonna have one of the Queens aids deliver it in a Golden Carriage?

Originally Posted by lucy7

We once gave our laps tops to a "friend" who works at repairs.
My husband forgot to give him our passwords, we then were not contactable for a week, due to being abroad with no mobiles.
He hacked in and did what my husnband wanted done to them.
We at the time did not mind, then months later in a convo, he said something which I picked up on. He would of only know it if he had gone through our stuff!!

Ex friend now.

getting into a passworded system is easy ive had to do it in similar circumstances.

When I have a machine that needs a clean up ie has a malware problem and data needs to be recovered I ask the client to copy everything into one folder on the desktop and I rar it up then burn it to disc then scan it in a virtual machine before it goes back I do not open the folder. If there is a nasty the AV 99% of the time can delete it. It is a shame that there are so many charlatans in the trade it makes it harder for guys like me who just wants to keep clients happy so they come back and tell their friends

[Dai]

Originally Posted by zing

getting into a passworded system is easy ive had to do it in similar circumstances.

How many customers have no clue what is the password for the master Administrator account? Almost all, I can tell you.

A reset disk for system passwords is an absolute essential.