Geek Squad Accused Of Stealing Customer’s Naked Photos

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Wow, stealing naked photos of someone that actually works with you? That's a new low, even for Best Buy. :eek:

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff worked at the Best Buy in question at the time. Back in 2011, she brought her computer in to the convenient Geek Squad desk to get a hard drive problem fixed. It wasn’t until two years later that a co-worker told her that pictures of her were circulating freely online, including on public BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay.
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Well if you're stupid enough to put it out there, send it to anyone, or just leave it on your pc....
Its going to get out there.
Don't bitch because you forget to delete and gave it to someone else.
Last Boost phone my brother bought was used, still had naked pics of the previous owner on them along with her college papers.
Really.
Took him about all of 3 seconds to find it all and send them to everyone he knew.

You want to be safe?
Don't take nudes in the first place.
 
Seriously, how does somebody that works there, not know about the reputation the Geek Squad has for stealing people private nudie pics?
 
I had a friend working on one of the Best Buys here in southern California. They will literary comb your hard drive looking for anything interesting to steal be it music, videos, photos etc. He said they kept a server full of the stolen goodies for everyone to share :rolleyes:
 
You’d think that the Geek Squad would have learned their lesson by now. Best Buy paid an undisclosed amount to settle a civil lawsuit after a Michigan nerd herd stole and shared a customer’s nude photos of herself.
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And here'in lies part of the problem. The current legal system is a little whacked.

In this case for example the bad guy isn't really Geek Squad as a business, it's individual employees who violated the law and I am sure Company Policy as well. Current law says sue the Company let the Company deal with their employee. That's cause only the company has any real money to get as damages but the employee usually only get's fired, whoopee, he wasn't going anywhere in life anyway and he will probably still get another job later somewhere else.

But what if you stream line the legal process a little. The Company get's a simple fine, just enough that you can be pretty sure they will still fire the employee. But you hammer the hell out of the employee. In a case like this he get's something like a $10,000 fine/settlement. If he doesn't have the cash you take all he has, you take his beater car, his gaming computer, his guns, almost everything of value that can be sold to cover his debt. It's a Civil suit, he'll recover and he won't have a felony record and we won't have to pay for his meals in prison. That guy probably won't be looking through anyone's hard drive again and maybe more will learn not to as well.
 
Isn't it already known that the only benny Geek Squad gets is customer's nudies? :p
 
lcpiper said:
And here'in lies part of the problem. The current legal system is a little whacked.

In this case for example the bad guy isn't really Geek Squad as a business, it's individual employees who violated the law and I am sure Company Policy as well. Current law says sue the Company let the Company deal with their employee. That's cause only the company has any real money to get as damages but the employee usually only get's fired, whoopee, he wasn't going anywhere in life anyway and he will probably still get another job later somewhere else.

But what if you stream line the legal process a little. The Company get's a simple fine, just enough that you can be pretty sure they will still fire the employee. But you hammer the hell out of the employee. In a case like this he get's something like a $10,000 fine/settlement. If he doesn't have the cash you take all he has, you take his beater car, his gaming computer, his guns, almost everything of value that can be sold to cover his debt. It's a Civil suit, he'll recover and he won't have a felony record and we won't have to pay for his meals in prison. That guy probably won't be looking through anyone's hard drive again and maybe more will learn not to as well.
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Right. But no one gives a crap about getting some guy's computer, car, etc. to sell for a couple grand, or having to try to get that stuff in the first place, dealing with getting paid a few grand over the course of years based on wage garnishments, etc.

They want to get paid $$$$$$
 
Exactly how do you blame bestbuy for this? She didn't find out til 2 years later? She could have a trojan on her computer, or a friend / roomate / friend of roomates could of got on her computer found them and uploaded them?
 
I thought this was standard procedure when anyone fixes a PC is too find all the goodies on the system before you wipe it and back it up.....just not meant to be backed up on your own personal drive...or is it? lol
 
SGA76 said:
Well if you're stupid enough to put it out there, send it to anyone, or just leave it on your pc....
Its going to get out there.
Don't bitch because you forget to delete and gave it to someone else.
Last Boost phone my brother bought was used, still had naked pics of the previous owner on them along with her college papers.
Really.
Took him about all of 3 seconds to find it all and send them to everyone he knew.

You want to be safe?
Don't take nudes in the first place.
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Says the Geek Squad employee ;)
 
As scuzzy as this guy's actions are, the user has to take some responsibility for this situation. It simply wasn't in her best interests in giving a computer or hard drive containing photos like that to someone she didn't know and trust completely, or at least could watch closely while he was working on the computer.

Best bet, as The Consumerist notes, is to keep these kinds of things on a separate hard drive, good bet to have them encrypted, or at the very least delete them from that computer's hard drive before taking it in for service.
 
Wait the store guys did some work on retrieving the info, and they didn't charge $300 for that?

I'm stunned at both of those things happening.
 
dgingeri said:
As scuzzy as this guy's actions are, the user has to take some responsibility for this situation. It simply wasn't in her best interests in giving a computer or hard drive containing photos like that to someone she didn't know and trust completely, or at least could watch closely while he was working on the computer.

Best bet, as The Consumerist notes, is to keep these kinds of things on a separate hard drive, good bet to have them encrypted, or at the very least delete them from that computer's hard drive before taking it in for service.
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Better still....

Never take nudie photos in the first place. I don't get why people continually do this to themselves...and then act astonished when said nudie pics surface on the public internet.
 
percydaman said:
Seriously, how does somebody that works there, not know about the reputation the Geek Squad has for stealing people private nudie pics?
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This was my exact reaction as well. She deserved the lion's share of fault here.
 
Skripka said:
Better still....

Never take nudie photos in the first place. I don't get why people continually do this to themselves...and then act astonished when said nudie pics surface on the public internet.
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Naw, my fan club would be very disappointed if I stopped snapping nude pics to 'mire.
 
SGA76 said:
Well if you're stupid enough to put it out there, send it to anyone, or just leave it on your pc....
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Just because you leave your door unlocked does not mean that stealing your stuff is without consequences.
 
SGA76 said:
Well if you're stupid enough to put it out there, send it to anyone, or just leave it on your pc....
Its going to get out there.
Don't bitch because you forget to delete and gave it to someone else.
Last Boost phone my brother bought was used, still had naked pics of the previous owner on them along with her college papers.
Really.
Took him about all of 3 seconds to find it all and send them to everyone he knew.

You want to be safe?
Don't take nudes in the first place.
Click to expand...

So you just gave evidence against him for court proceedings on invasion of privacy. The right thing to do would have been delete the pictures and data and file a complaint with Boost, maybe even bring a suit against them for lack of privacy controls and mental anguish.

Bravo I say, someone needs to lock up all the punks who inadvertently ruin another persons chance of a normal life.
 
While I do feel the customer bears some responsibility here, they may have deleted the files in question and thought they were good to go. But as most of us know, it's easy enough to get back deleted files with an number of cheap or free utilities. I'm sure the BB Geeks (and most other places) do this on every hard drive they feel there may be something of interest on. I always warn people about these kind of practices when they mention they might bring their computer somewhere to have it checked out.
 
People take absolutely no steps to make sure that their photos cannot be easily viewed. Just the other day I was working with a girl who wanted a virus removed from her computer and while I was talking to her I saw a file sitting on her desktop, in plain view that had nudes in it. Stupidity on both sides here.
 
What I want to know is, how is she so sure Geek Squad did it, 2 years after the fact?

I assume they fixed the computer and gave it back to her, with the nudes still on it, did nobody else ever touch the computer again after that? People who have geek squad fix their PC do it because they can't do it themselves (and also tend to break it a lot). How does she know it wasn't the shady discount repair place she brought it to 3 months ago?

Then again, this is geek squad, so they might have been dumb enough to tag the torrent "stolen from a geek squad customer"
 
Honestly, if you are working on someone's PC, you should be aware that it puts you in a position of trust within the law. Unless you have been granted specific rights to distribute any private material contained, you are required to safeguard any data you happen to come across.

You guys might want to take note of this before you end up in jail by thinking you are going to be cool and show those private nudies to your buds.
 
The kind of stuff I've seen on people's computers that I've worked on is simply amazing.
 
GotNoRice said:
The kind of stuff I've seen on people's computers that I've worked on is simply amazing.
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Obligatory story time.
We had a regular customer of ours come into the computer shop I worked at, wanting us to copy a bunch of pictures to a DVD-R (he didn't have a dvd-r drive). He left a note saying which folders he wanted copied.

They were all pictures of him....in drag.....
 
BBA said:
Honestly, if you are working on someone's PC, you should be aware that it puts you in a position of trust within the law. Unless you have been granted specific rights to distribute any private material contained, you are required to safeguard any data you happen to come across.

You guys might want to take note of this before you end up in jail by thinking you are going to be cool and show those private nudies to your buds.
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1. Work on someones computer.
2. Find nudes, don't bill for fixing the computer.
3. ????
4. Profit
 
Why would a woman take nude pictures of herself in the first place, if not to give them to someone? self-reference? Narcissism porn? Memoirs for when shes 80 years old?

I bet she gave them to her boyfriend, who later became the ex-bf (which seems to be where a third of the nudes on the net come from)
 
pcjunkie said:
The better term would be douchebag...
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Morality does not absolve responsibility.

Just because someone "Shouldn't" do something, doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to take reasonable precautions.
 
This is stupid. She was looking for a lawsuit. There's NO way she could have worked there and NOT known that they did this.

That, or Best Buy doesn't do a "Lessons Learned" and circulate new training and requirements when there's an incident. Otherwise, she would have known that it was a typical event and if she was truely concerned, she would not have given them her computer.

Isn't this the same as the google news yesterday that we shouldn't expect ANY privacy when it comes to info passing through google?
 
In this day and age the answer is simple.

If you don't want naked pictures of yourself on the internet, don't take (or allow anyone take) naked pictures of yourself.

It's that simple.

In this day and age, if they exist, they will eventually wind up on the internet.
 
Apparently the right to privacy doesn't exist anymore...a lot of you would fight right in with the NSA. It's the same as any other work related position that deals with customer sensitive information. Morally and legally your obligated to keep whats on their compute private unless authorized by the court.
 
J Macker said:
This is stupid. She was looking for a lawsuit. There's NO way she could have worked there and NOT known that they did this.
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She worked at Best Buy, but clearly not in the Geek Squad department. Also, the fact that she worked there means this is a double crime as it's also a form of sexual harassment.

She should have known better. That doesn't give people the license to throw away common decency, however. I can guess how you'd feel if that happened to you...but, oh wait, you'd "know better." Well bully for you. What about your tax returns? Maybe you should have known about this little rule you broke.

Ignorance is no justification for breaking the law, but it is when the law is broken against you. If I wander into the wrong part of town and get shot, I guess I "had it coming," right? Why even go after the shooter? Shit, I got what I deserved.
 
Let's see the pics ... or it didn't happen. :eek::rolleyes::cool:

It is amazing, even with years of stories in the news about stuff like this, people remain so friggin out of touch with any precautions to protect their privacy. :(
 
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