Best Buy has quite a support service in Geek Squad. It's the only national tech service center, and it makes house calls. I had a tech come to calibrate my HDTV set, and the difference was night and day.
In 2014, Geek Squad brought in $1.8 billion in revenue, which was a drop from the previous year, but still accounted for 5 percent of Best Buy revenue. So, it's not insignificant.
And it seems the geeks are making a few extra bucks. The Orange County Weekly reports that the company's repair technicians routinely search devices brought in for repair for files that could earn them $500 reward as FBI informants.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is about as blatant a case of unconstitutional search and seizure as it gets.
Well i have never had any trust in then from the start, as they are trained to sell then fix. And most of the time they cant even fix stuff right, miss diagnosing things as larger problem they are.
Not necessarily due to privacy concerns, probably more due to shoddy work by others; I try to fix everything myself. Plumbing, electrical, automotive, and computers. It is a good learning experience.
Redundant. Anyone who takes their PC to BestBuy for GeekSquad to fix, likely doesn't care about their data and just wants the crypto-virus to come off so they can get back to Facebook.
I was a Staples Easy Tech a few years ago. The only people we ever got for tech services were:
people who didn't know a nerd (25%)
old people (40%)
the stupid and angry (33%)
occasionally, you would get a genuinely nice person who wasn't tech savvy (2%)
Who would ever let a stranger dig through their files in order to fix a computer? I mean I would look closely at what someone's doing for me, even if it's just changing a tube. FBI wants to show off how they don't need no laws or agreement with anyone to spy on people, they just pay mercenaries. Now what NSA? You just got rekt!
they are interested in different types of information. They are instructed to notice if computer was used by tagged individuals (usually FBI will visit them after device was placed with Geek Squad or any other service techs - individuals under wiretap or related people who may matter; they are to check for sale of narcotics, terrorism attempts etc... they don't care about anything else.
A smart person would never need to go to 'Geek Squad' or whatever you would call it. It is constitutional because you sign and agree disclosure agreement. No1 reads it but that's how it is.
I worked as a laptop tech at a competitor to best buy when I was in college(I'm in my early 30's now). We didn't have any paid agreements with law enforcement but we did have to turn over a few machines to the police.
Understand how many people are into fucked up stuff that don't really hide it. I personally tried my hardest not to look through photos and other files as it wasn't my business. I'd open a photo or two or some word docs while moving data to make sure the data was clear but really tried not to pay attention to it. The amount of times someone would ask though for us to backup their photos and that ended up being well organized porn was crazy though.
Personally I wouldn't want to go looking for bad stuff in the hope of getting 500 bucks. Last thing I want to do is find child porn, have to look at it, and then risk being stuck looking at it again if it manages to go to trial. I was somehow lucky that I never had to be called as a witness, the small amount of stuff I saw is pretty much burned into my brain.
Other techs would look though stuff more. A few had hard drives they kept the good porn videos on(professional ones, not homemade) they found. I do remember one time another tech finding a bunch of videos on a guys desktop labeled chickswithdicks1, 2, 3, etc. He tried his hardest to get everyone he could to watch them laughing.
It is worth saying this isn't limited to computer techs. Service people that come into your home, cleaning ladies, mechanics, etc all can get a laugh from time to time at the crazy shit people have/do.
