Comment by flatiron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flatiron | Hacker News Reader

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It was deleted. Here is the OG Text: "Ok so this just happened. Buckle up.

About a month ago my wife broke her pixel phone. It couldn't be turned on so we couldn't wipe it.

We contact Google and used the device care to get an RMA.

Today someone posted nude pictures of my wife and I to her social media accounts. They accessed her Google account and tried to lock us out. They used her PayPal to send someone $5 (a test probably).

How could this happen? Well Facebook and Instagram show logins from Texas. The old phone still showed on our find my phone app and it was in Texas. Guess where we sent the phone for RMA? The last ping from the old phone (which was today) was the same as the place we shipped it. The exact location down to the very building. Clearly they fixed the old phone and since it wasn't wiped, was still logged into her Google account.

I called Google and they basically said "woah that's fucked up we'll get back to you". We filed a police report but I don't expect they will do anything.

What are my options here for sueing Google? I know that sounds insane but this breach of trust and privacy is egregious. Hundreds of people have now seen my penis including our friends kids. It's really fucked up.

Any advice on what to do here?"

my big question is whether this phone is password enabled. also this stinks because i know the first comment is "well do a factory reset" but if the phone doesn't turn on, etc. then i don't believe that is possible (short of possibly ADP which is out of the reach of 99% of people)

I had an issue with my pixel and had to send it in. The phone got ran over by a car and was smashed. It could be turned on but I could not do a factory reset. I have financial and other private information on it. So the first thing I did was try to keep it on for days until the battery ran out to see if the hardware encryption would help secure the data. After that I still wasn't sure if the information was secure enough so I took a drill through it to destroy as many of the ICs that I could. My wife then pointed out that maybe this self destruction that I did would violate some terms and void the insurance even though the phone was useless after being run over by the car. So, in the end, I decided to just buy a new phone without doing a trade in or insurance claim. The $500 or so was worth not risking PI.

> The $500 or so was worth not risking PI

As someone on Twitter replied to a similar comment [0]: "Phones are cheap, just buy another" WOW the privilege.

[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/mojonojo3/status/1467453133538611...

remember in many part of world $150 is like 1 month income. People might have privilege to destroy phone but 90% of people are simply going to repair it.

The least believable part of this story is that they _called Google_ and _talked to someone._ How?

No doubt they called Pixel Support. That's a physical device with an actual warranty.

I hate posting "this" comments. But THIS so much THIS... Google has literally no support. Not even for their physical hardware. Never buy anything from them...

They do have phone support and chat support for Pixel phones...

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/gethelp

(In french and probably most other languages.

Based on a previous case with Apple, this guy is going to be a millionaire. So at least he has that.

Assuming any of it is true, and he isn't just LARPing based on what he read about Apple a few months ago. I'd put the odds at 50/50.

That's pretty high. The default assumption about any personal story on reddit is that it's all lies.

All stories on the Internet are 100% real: https://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html

Sure, but I also have a standard where any time I can't determine any odds, and the result is inconsequential to me, I call it a 50/50.

Good point. I've seen more than a few of these that turned out to just be a creative writing exercise.

Maybe he already is - thus the deleted comment.

That's more of a sign that he got legal advice, hopefully from an actual lawyer that he hired.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6160491?hl=en

If the phone doesn't turn on you can still queue up a wipe from Find My Device which would've prevented this.

And no, it was clearly not "password enabled".

> If the phone doesn't turn on you can still queue up a wipe from Find My Device which would've prevented this.

That's assuming that a competent technician couldn't disable that feature. For example, it's hard to ensure that some software issue (eg: software/hardware interaction) has been resolved if you just wipe the device!

Huh? If it's not official software then it's not Google's problem and they don't care. If it is official software then it would still be there post-wipe and therefore it wouldn't be difficult at all to ensure that the issue has been resolved. Of course, that's all moot because wiping the device wouldn't be a step to take in the case of a driver (or other software) issue anyway.

> my big question is whether this phone is password enabled

I read all the comments before it was deleted. In one of the replies the OP stated the phone had a smashed screen and would not turn on*, but had no screen lock/password

*his words not mine, it is unclear if he knew the distinction between zero display output and not turning on

I hope they're smart enough to sue google for a several million dollars. I bet they could have their choice of quality lawyers to do this case for that 33% cut.

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