Gotta wonder if Steve knows
scripting.com
scripting.com
My coworker replaced the keyboard in a MacBook Pro and when he called to ask AppleCare if they would still honor the warranty they said yes.
Obviously, if they have the hardware, they can do pretty much whatever they'd like, so it wasn't that they would be able to use it to look at her personal files or whatever (we had already removed anything personal before bringing it in).
It was that they, acting as a trusted authority, were telling people that it's okay to give away your password. It also means that anyone who uses the same password for their machine as they do for their email or their other accounts is handing their life over. Of course people shouldn't be doing this, but of course very many do, and it's just completely irresponsible of Apple to explicitly put people in a position where this could easily be exploited by some faceless tech behind the counter.
As much as I love their products, I really hate how Apple operates sometimes.
I suppose there are times where the computer won't boot and they really don't have any other choice besides asking you for your password--the employee might have just mixed up their protocol, though that's not to say that it excuses that mistake.
Not always, but it happens enough that they'd need to be able to log-in.
Still agree that asking for your pwd is reckless.
One would think that for a company so concerned with internal privacy they would care a little more for their users...
Apple doesn't want to be in the business of fielding customer complaints about missing or unreadable files. Which, in the context of a hard drive replacement or repair, is not exactly an uncommon outcome.
Apple also doesn't want to be in the business of helping people recover files from dead drives.
Apple really, really doesn't want to be in the business of ensuring that the drive it removed from a computer goes back to the same owner as the original machine. Try to imagine what the Apple repair depo looks like: Drives everywhere. Try to remember that a drive inside a computer is protected by a user password, but a drive sitting outside the computer is not protected at all. Except perhaps by Filevault, which many users do not enable. If you think getting no drive back is bad, imagine the scandal if you got someone else's drive, and someone else got your drive.
Apple's simple policy solves all of these problems. They don't send drives back. Instead they promise to erase them. Either you find this credible or you don't. If you don't, you'd better be using Filevault, because once you put an unencrypted drive in the hands of a tech its content is as good as disclosed. And if you are using Filevault, what is the problem with refurbing your drive? It's filled with unreadable encrypted data!
Finally, dare I suggest that nobody except the typical HN reader is better at disposing of old hard drives without a security incident than Apple is? I bet if you hand a broken hard drive back to the average buyer, outside of a computer, 90% of those drives will eventually get thrown away intact. Exactly how is throwing a readable hard drive in your local dumpster more secure than Apple's dedicated drive-erasure-or-disposal facility?
I agree with many of your points, but would argue throwing a hard drive in a dumpster is more secure. Bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is. Where would tech savvy people looking for unerased hard drives find a supply--where the hard drives are! Those folks are more likely to work at Apple than dumpster dive for a living.
But if you are an industrial spy looking for a particular secret, or a personal enemy looking for data about one person, or an aspiring burglar casing a particular building - you look in the trash can belonging to your target.
I think the latter threat is as plausible as the former.
When he got the laptop back, he was told that the "hard drive was going bad", so they proactively replaced it with a new one with a default image. This made me really mad, but they don't care or understand. Even if it was going bad, that was still HIS hard drive. The computer was still under warranty so they should have shipped the old disk back with the new.
I don't trust anyone else to clean out disks on my behalf. There are far too many instances of negligence on the matter. If the drive really was going bad, they should have sent it back and let me destroy and dispose of it personally.
How do I know that they don't have a FBI hookup that scans all of the "bad" drives before refurbishing or disposing, or how do I know that they don't have a contract with the MPAA/RIAA to allow their anti-piracy goons to do that? How do I know it doesn't pass through a group of teenagers who parse it for nudes, as happens at most computer repair shops?
Yeah, it sucks pretty bad. My family is completely indifferent to it and it's probably too late to call and try to get something done about it. : (
The computer could get lost/stolen while in shipment. The repairment isn't the only potential leaks for your personal stuff.
I'm angry because I think apple is earning money from product failure!
http://pathdependent.com/2010/06/12/apple-owns-your-harddriv...
The old drive (working or not) is returned to Apple. If you wish to keep your original drive, Apple charges a significant core charge.
Beyond that, Winer straight up doesn't know what they do with the drives; it's pure speculation. What he's really saying is that he doesn't trust Apple. If that's the case, he should take it to an independent Authorized Apple Service Provider that he does — it's just that simple. [Edit: not only can you still get AppleCare coverage at independent providers, but you can easily negotiate with a technician to keep your drive. At the place I worked, the drives that customers abandoned we took great pleasure in destroying!]
Further, when Winer says, "If Steve thinks it's confidential, maybe he should take some steps to protect the info?" — is that not exactly what he's doing?
It seems shady to me to give over an old drive full of personal information without giving the user the option to keep it.
But if Steve's bank account was cleared out, he'd be OK somehow? $0 is $0 regardless of how much money you had before you lost everything.
And get this -- when Apple sells you a "new" drive to replace the broken one, at 1.5 times what it would cost mail order, how much you want to bet it's someone else's broken hard drive that they got for free.