Apple pays out millions to student after repair techs shared her personal images

I sympathise with the young woman who was the victim here, but apart from "send your device unlocked" Apple do also recommend wiping the device before sending it.

When PINs started to become more common here, I had supermarket and continence store workers asking me to tell them the pin to my card, when paying for stuff. It didn't help that they'd ask me in Thai, I'd not understand, my wife would translate, and I'd immediately respond - in English - to the staff "Are you fucking crazy?".

Thankfully that idea didn't last long. I guess enough other people had similar reactions in their native tongue that they realised that's a really stupid way to do business.

Edit: This was during the times when even a layman could do it because drives were in a slot secured by a single screw. These days it might be more complex.

If it's a software issue then maybe they do legitimately need a password but i would never hand one over without very careful consideration. And, strange hands on the keyboard of my laptop or phone would be watched very very closely at all times.

I good app would be one that disables the network stack, bluetooth, and cell modem with a separate secure pin.

At the Apple Store, they also asked for the password, but when I said no way, the support person was just "ok, no problem".

When you go to the doctor and they prescribe you pills, most people don't question it and just take them. And that leads to a lot of people taking antibiotics that they don't need. Or when you move and need to sign up for internet, phone service, power, water, electricity, gas, etc.... almost all of them will ask for your social security number. Even I don't know when it's mandatory and when it's optional, so usually I ask them first, but sometimes I don't.

The last time I witnessed this was some malware that infected an ex-roommate's laptop. The malware pretended to be an anti-virus and said she had a virus on her computer that it would fix. But first she needed to pay for the software - by putting in her credit card info & social security number. She complied because the files on her laptop were very sensitive and she didn't want lose them, and she had no idea that there was no reason to ask for a social to pay for this software.

We could probably do more as a community to educate people on keeping sensitive information secure. Part of it involves media outreach, as most people seem to get their news from the TV or Facebook.

I'm just glad they have an excellent example here of how it's fundamentally BS

Sure, you can send in a wiped device or a device without hard drive - and if you can do so yourself, this is probably fine. But for the "average" user it's quite likely a better experience, assuming you can trust the repair shop - but then again, they have full access to your hardware plus the knowledge and time to permanently bug your device. If you really don't trust them, you probably should not give them your device at all.

I can see the issue here and I'd probably err on the side of privacy given the choice, but the other side has a point.

I refused and they eventually relented while still providing the warranty but it ended up delaying the repair by 5 days (for a 2h repair).

I think these are concepts that before would have seemed liked sci-fi, but after 2020, I think most regular people seem to have an intuitive appreciation for how damaging this can be. It's a shame that it's taken such a tragic schism to allow, but here we are and it's better late than never.

Another example would be people probably have a better intuitive understanding for motivations behind decentralized architecture, after seeing people being removed from certain platforms. Note: I'm not saying I'm for or against this in any way, but I am saying that the technological architecture is sort of the lay of the land, in a way that I think people understand better than they used to.

And no, I would never in a million years give my password to a repair technician in the past either. Hopefully others now are starting to get a sense for why.

You can't start with "It just works" and then add "As long as you spend hours backing up and restoring your data before you can send it in for repairs, just - you know - in case."

Maybe the millions that were paid out will make Apple think about a more user-oriented solution.

I told them in no uncertain terms they cannot have my password, full disk encryption was enabled, and then pointed out if they can get the machine to the password prompt I'll be satisfied it's repaired.

I'm convinced these people are either intentionally being nefarious, or they were dropped on their fucking heads at birth.

My daughter's MacBook Pro, with lovely soldered down solid state memory died, and had to go in for repair. There was simply no way to wipe it, and no physical drive to pull.

Same thing with most phones. Soldered storage, glued shut case. If it dies under warranty, what do you do? You have to trust the repair chain, or just chuck it in the garbage.

This is a gross understatement. Before being a consultant, Nathan also had a phenomenal career on CBC's On Your Side segment, it was CBC Marketplace before Marketplace. Why Nathan hasn't been awarded the Order of Canada for his hard work on behalf of the every day Canadian is beyond me.

It was a good gig because I could get all my homework done while working, and state law said my pay needed to be equal to full time employees.

My boss took his job very serious. He got the state to send us to security seminars.

This was the late 80's and what suprised me the most is whom steals, or commits financial fraud.

At least back then most loss in retail was committed by management. The higher up the tree, the more they stole be it cash, or merchandise. The employees, and customers stole, but the big thefts were usually committed by long term trusted management types.

The instructor said, employees/owners usually don't question management, and they have more opportunities alone, with no one watching. He also said owners were notorious for stealing their stuff, and writing it off, or claiming it as a loss through their insurance company.

He said, this is a dirty secret, that most organizations don't want leaked. It's much easier to blame the homeless, or gangs on theft.

I imagine that has changed with the proliferation of cameras everywhere, but when I gear about large scale theft in a corporation, I automatically look at those in command of the employeees.

My local Goodwill had gone through three store managers in a row for embezzlement. This was years ago though. Goodwill never prosecutes employees because they don't want to tarnish their image.

In the occasion, they didn't upload it anywhere, but she discovered because in the moment she was picking up her device back somehow (don't know the details) she saw one of her half-naked pictures in the technician computer.

I feel like everyone thinks they are entitled to being able to google something as evidence of its occurrence and don’t realize that the absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/30/warren-buffett-on-wells-farg...

iOS has this in the form of apps that require Face ID to access them. Some fall back to your PIN if Face ID doesn't work but others do not, presumably a choice on the app developers behalf.

This exists. Anyone who is security conscious should store all of their sensitive files and PII in an encrypted vault that only they hold they keys to. Realistically, most people don't have the vigilance to do this, and it's pretty hard to do it perfectly. But I highly recommend to everyone at least to install something like Cryptomator to secure their most private documents and information, so that no one else has access even if they gain access to your computer or cloud storage.

I communicated this to Apple and while Apple apologized profusely to me, and even paid for the new battery and repair (I didn't ask for it, it was out of warranty for 5 years), but I still never trusted third-party repairers again... that put off buying new Apple stuff until I became able to move to a place with an Apple Store.

I'm happy to say however that I never had this problem going to the Apple Store in Berlin, but not everyone lives in a big city with one of those.

I'd call that a theft.

I mean, that sounds great in principle, except that I do remmeber reading about a case where they reported some older dude for having CP on his laptop, and it took him being arrested and fired from his job and obiously smeared in every newspaper possible, before prosecutor finally looked at the pictures and figured that yes, indeed, the "CP" in question was just pictures of his grandchildren in a pool with other family around.

- The victim isn't responsible for the crime committed against them, as shown by this verdict.

- It is common because it is under-prosecuted. Hopefully we can see changes there.

99% of the people just give the phone password to the tech. If I was a foreign intelligence service, I'd set up attractive repair shops around army bases and government offices (quick turn around, competent service, reasonable prices) and just mirror every phone that comes through. Most of it will be useless, but I'm sure that one can occasionally find some gold (in the form of documents or compromising material).

There could be a special mode accessible which allows testing of standard use cases.

Naturally I told them to wait a minute to erase my phone, but the technician told me that I shouldn't bother because the phones are kept in a safe anyways. Naturally I have still politely asked them to wait until I erase the phone, but this might not be everybody's reflex.

Edit: clarification, this was in an official Apple Store

My threat model is low risk enough that I trust the full-disk encryption of my phone. So it makes sense for me to send my phone in with all of the data to avoid the reinstall.

That sounds a bit like the Onion sketch "Google allows you to opt-out of tracking by moving to remote mountain village" [1].

This case proves that the criminal justice system works to protect your personal images, we just need a better way to be notified when it happens (the kind of action you would expect Apple to take if they cared, instead of "we continued to strengthen our vendor protocols")

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY

This might be the only surefire way now, but it's not how it should be. How it should be is that a HIIPA-like wrath of god may descend on you if it turns out you mishandle someone's data like this.

This is true, but focusing on nudes is somewhat missing the real point (and could be interpreted as victim blaming): this story is another example why your email and bank information should never make it on to a digital device. If pictures aren’t safe, then no information is safe. We all have chosen to put information on our devices that is not safe to publish.

Even Apple themselves shouldn't be able to access your stuff.

It definitely isn't an argument for that. It's an argument for cleaning your device before handing it to anybody together with the password. That is the only situation when you're at risk.

I really resonate with his opening point; that somehow there's this belief that the "authorised man can't be a creep". This same logic I see paraded about across a number of other sectors to discredit small businesses and institutions.

Awards for loss of life are actually codified in case law as being vastly smaller awards than the award for loss of limbs, senses, etc.

It is somewhat logical since the primary injured (the dead) can't be made whole. Contrast this to someone injured but not dead - they will have to live with the injury for the rest of their life. Case in point - this girl.

This is why disability policies are more expensive for higher income individuals. Presumably, the injured and his/her family depends on that income to live, and the income loss must be made whole.

or `shred` it. Probably takes longer but more secure.

What should happen here is the technician should be named, there should be big billboards put up in whatever town they live in, and they should have to get "I distributed child porn" tattooed on their face. As well as not be allowed to come within 50 yards of a computer or cell phone or transistor. There are harms you can't undo and the punishment should be as permanent as the harm.

With the laptop example they can pull the storage medium (2.5" HDD/SSD, or NVMe), service it, and then reinstall. Whereas iOS devices have storage soldered onto the mainboard and there's a cryptographic sync between the T2 chip and OS installation, so you cannot simply swap the storage onto a different phone (this is actually a legitimate security feature that just happens to hurt service-ability also).

I believe there are things they can do (different levels of access, managed by iOS) but the laptop analogy doesn't help here since it is an Apples and Grapefruit kinda comparison.

They don’t. I’ve done it several times with my old MBP and a couple of iPhones. I never leave a device with a technician without wiping it first. If someone gets upset about that, the proper thing to do is escalate with the manager, because that would be highly irregular.

I don't recall FB having a mechanism to automatically sync your camera roll to your FB feed.

Or do you mean to suppose they thought they were on there own FB account and expected to send the pics to themselves?