Published: Wednesday 22nd July, 2009 | Author: Parm Mann
Companies: BSkyB (All BSkyB content)
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email to a friendA Sky News investigation has found that PC repair shops are wrongly diagnosing computer faults and consequently charging excessive amounts - all whilst attempting to steal a customers' data.
Such behaviour will come as little surprise to most, but the investigation acts as a stark reminder for those a little less tech savvy.
Sky's undercover investigation made use of a notebook equipped with screen-capturing software and a hidden built-in webcam, both used to capture the work of the so-called PC repair specialists.
To make the notebook appear faulty, Sky loosened a memory chip to prevent Windows from loading. A repair would simply involve having the chip pushed back into place. Pix 4, a repair shop in Shepherds Bush, diagnosed the fault correctly and repaired it free of charge. Sadly, the following shops didn't perform as admirably:
Revival Computers in Hammersmith, West London, claimed a new motherboard would be required at a cost of £130. At the same store, Sky's surveillance software captured employees browsing files and copying holiday photos onto a memory stick. Inside one of the system's documents, another employee found fake banking login details and repeatedly attempted to access the customer's bank account.
Digitech in Putney, West London, were quick to fix the fault but were also found to be browsing through the system's pictures. A Digitech technician attempted to hide his tracks by clearing the list of recent documents, and a statement from the firm states that the photo browsing was merely an attempt to ensure working memory.
Others include Micro Anvika on Tottenham Court Road who charged £145 for a full examination, and Evnova Computers in Barbican who also claimed the motherboard needed replacing.
Then there's PC World in Brentford. Although not found to be snooping data, PC World Brentford demanded an advance payment of £230 for a new motherboard. The store has since apologised and refunded the money.
Back in 1997, PC World staff at another store found child pornography on the system of one Gary Glitter.
Source: Sky News
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I think it should be common practice that harddrives are removed prior to handing any computer for repair. And people don't care they get their bank account details stolen, they can always get the bank to refund any loss due to fraud.
The trouble is that a lot of the time a computer problem is software related, so removing the HDD in those cases would pointless. Most of the problems the company I used to work for (as a web designer, not engineer) were things like viruses and slow performance with which you need the HDD.Quote
This is a prime example of why I personally would never use a repair shop, you just never know who you can or cannot trust.
Sadly many people do not have a choice as they neither know how to do it themselves, or anyone else who would know AND be willing to do it for them.
All people have to go by is recommendations. Then again the person who recommended it could have been ripped off and/or had their files snopped / copied, but had a working computer at the end of it.Quote
I think it should be common practice that harddrives are removed prior to handing any computer for repair.
Surely removing the hdd isnt going to help in the diagnostic process, even if it isnt completely software related.
and do you think these repair shows have a spare hdd laying around with a copy of windows/other os for every make and model of laptop/pc?
unless of course you want them to charge you an extra few hundred quid for diagnosis purposes just for loading/configuring an OS?
then whats next? removing ram incase its gets pinched / replaced by a lesser module?
dont give em your quad core cpu incase they downgrade it to a celeron?
The people who use these repair shops wont know the diff in most cases....Quote
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