One of the things I often tell people is that with their smartphones, they are now carrying their lives in their pockets. These are semi-precious objects offering access to every aspect of our personal lives and information. Despite this, many people don’t treat them that way, and sometimes that cavalier attitude can lead to disaster.
Recently, I came across a disturbing story about a Best Buy employee who, while repairing her iPhone, allegedly accessed the customer’s personal photos and then AirDropped a few to his personal phone.
Yes, these were intimate photos, and no, the woman didn’t discover the alleged act until after she left the store. When I checked with Best Buy for comment, they sent me this:
“These allegations are deeply disturbing. Nothing is more important to us than the safety and data privacy of our customers. This person is no longer an employee, and we are working with law enforcement as they continue their investigation.”
While the case is ongoing, there are many lessons here.
I have no thoughts about the kinds of pictures people take and store on their smartphones, but I have many on the multiple mistakes the woman may have made before this alleged image hijacking.
I’m not blaming her — the guy allegedly stole her personal photos, but my next thought was: “Has she never heard of hidden folders?”
A private space
If there are photos on your phone that, say, you wouldn’t want your parents to see, then you can choose to hide them in a hidden folder that will only open with your PIN or biometric security.
On the iPhone, you open the image and select the three-dot menu, then select “Hide”. After that, the image will no longer appear in your photo gallery. There will instead be a hidden folder that you can open, for instance, with Face ID.
On, say, a Samsung Galaxy Android Phone, you can send the image to a secure folder that, again, no one can open without access to your password or biometric security.
The rules of the service road
We don’t know all the details of this exchange, but it is clear that the customer handed her unlocked iPhone to the Best Buy support agent, who could then apparently peruse virtually anything without some kind of lock or password on it.
I know, you’re wondering how anyone can get their phone repaired if they don’t unlock it first. Even if it’s just troubleshooting some iOS-level complication, access to the phone’s apps and data is essentially necessary.
But access to your private data is not.
When I’ve visited an Apple Store’s Genius bar, I’ve noticed how often much of the work on a faulty iPhone is, where possible, done right in front of the customer. There are situations where it goes behind the scenes, to a place the customer can’t see, but they’re relatively rare.
Best Buy is an authorized Apple repair center; most of their on-site documentation seems to support the idea of care for your property and data. From Best Buy’s Privacy Policy page:
“…our Geek Squad Agents are trained to never access data on a customer’s device provided to Geek Squad for service except in limited circumstances, and only to the extent necessary to perform the service, such when you ask us to recover your data.”
This situation sounds different. Clearly, the phone left the customer’s sight. What if, though, she had taken another step in protecting her personal data?
The nuclear option
If you’re not already backing up your smartphone to the cloud, you should start now. Apple’s iCloud lets you keep basically a carbon copy of your phone’s data in its cloud (Samsung Cloud offers a similar service for its Galaxy phones), which you can then use to, say, upgrade to a new iPhone that will quickly feel as familiar as your old phone.
Most people only erase their phones when they plan to sell or trade them in, but if you plan on getting any repairs done, the first thing you should do is erase your device.
First, a full erase and restore might fix your problems (assuming they’re not hardware-based). Second, a clean phone will let the technician focus solely on the platform and hardware and have nothing else to look at or stumble upon.
You cna also do this in a more limited way, say, byt signing out of apps, removing ID and credit cards.
Don’t take a pass on this
I get it, for some, this might be too much. In that case, see the hidden folders approach above, but also take another step: Fix your passwords.
Far too many people are still using terrible, easy-to-guess passwords or, worse, using one password for all their apps, even their banking apps.
Do this before seeking repair:
- Add a password manager
- Create a hard to crack Master password (but one you can easily remember)
- Go through all your apps and service passwords and update them while allowing the password manager to create the passwords and store them
- Be sure to remove any privacy/security information from Notes, a place I know many of you store your passwords
If you do some, any, or all of these things, you can avoid the wrong people seeing the wrong information on the device that contains almost every detail of your life.
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