Some shops denied the allegations outright, while others offered more apologetic remarks. As for the technician caught transferring personal documents and photos to an external USB drive, he tried to justify his actions.
“I just wanted to see if (there was) anything important … because I wouldn’t want to mess with something that’s very confidential, like some government stuff,” he said.
“I tried to clone it to another SSD (solid-state drive). Then I put it on my test bench to see whether it’s the Windows issue.”
His story began to unravel, though. Earlier, he had told a producer the issue was hardware-related, not software-related. He eventually admitted to “trying to play (around with accounts) sometimes”. He said: “I’m just playful sometimes.”
PROTECTING YOUR DATA
It may be unsettling, but technicians accessing personal photos and documents seems to be a grey area in the law. Sometimes they may be simply conducting broad searches for JPEG files or videos, looking for clues to the device’s issues.
