Post: #1

Or anywhere else, really. Or, if you have to, remove the hard drive first.

My friend worked at the Geek Squad for several years. The first thing most of them do is snoop through your computer looking for ANYTHING either incriminating (illegal software, a downloaded movie or TV show, the wrong kind of porn, criminal activities discussed in email or documents, etc) or generally racy (tit pics, sex tapes, etc) - and that was before the FBI would pay them to do it.

Now that the FBI is paying them, I'm sure every computer company will do it outright or at least have some employees on the take.

Of course the FBI will try to say that this is to fight child pornography but we all know it extends beyond that. Protect your data.

Quote:The San Francisco-based nonprofit privacy group sued the Justice Department after it refused a request for documents about how the FBI recruits, trains and pays Best Buy workers to find illegal child pornography on customer computers sent to Best Buy for repairs.

“The public has a right to know how the FBI uses computer repair technicians to carry out searches the agents themselves cannot do without a warrant,” EFF senior counsel David Sobel said in a statement. “People authorize Best Buy employees to fix their computers, not conduct unconstitutional searches on the FBI’s behalf.”

http://www.thewrap.com/justice-departmen...uad-spies/

EDIT: Notice the fake news part. They try to pin this on Trump, even though it's clearly a program started under Obama. The liberal media just can't help themselves, even when they have a legitimate story, they have to make it a political dig against Trump.

Quote:The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Justice Department, demanding access to records about any FBI training and payment to Geek Squad workers to search customer computers without a court warrant.

Post: #2

If you don't call to cancel your "contract" they keep billing you into eternity.

Post: #3

Actually if memory serves me right, this has been going on since Bush's admin. Even if blaming Trump's admin for it is not correct, the likelihood he would even have this on his agenda shortlist of things to eliminate, is not realistic either. When things are about pedos, more often than not, the government gets alot of leeway. This is one of those programs a judge more or less would have to end because no one else is going to bother stopping it. The FBI is so aggressive against child porn that they sometimes fuck up one case via overreach or warrant abuse just to ensnare 100 more guys in the same web.

The truth is that very few kid porn items are original content and only held by one guy. They want all those who traded or purchased it, down to the guy that made it, if possible.

Post: #4

(06-01-2017 03:52 PM)Captainstabbin Wrote:  EDIT: Notice the fake news part. They try to pin this on Trump, even though it's clearly a program started under Obama. The liberal media just can't help themselves, even when they have a legitimate story, they have to make it a political dig against Trump.

Quote:The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Justice Department, demanding access to records about any FBI training and payment to Geek Squad workers to search customer computers without a court warrant.

This is definitely not "pinning it on Trump." That is how a FOIA lawsuit would work in this case--you sue the Justice Department under the current administration. No need to reach for a chance to rail against liberal media--I'm sure you'll find better chances.

Post: #5

Big surprise and I'm sure anybody you hire to fix or work on your computer will do some snooping. But let's get real here, if you're a Roosh V forum member and you're taking your computer to Geek Squad...

Post: #6

(06-01-2017 04:15 PM)Teflon1 Wrote:  

(06-01-2017 03:52 PM)Captainstabbin Wrote:  EDIT: Notice the fake news part. They try to pin this on Trump, even though it's clearly a program started under Obama. The liberal media just can't help themselves, even when they have a legitimate story, they have to make it a political dig against Trump.

Quote:The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Justice Department, demanding access to records about any FBI training and payment to Geek Squad workers to search customer computers without a court warrant.

This is definitely not "pinning it on Trump." That is how a FOIA lawsuit would work in this case--you sue the Justice Department under the current administration. No need to reach for a chance to rail against liberal media--I'm sure you'll find better chances.

Please. If this was done under Obama's administration the article would have read "lawsuit against the Justice Department" with no mention of Obama. They'd even try to add a line about, "The program, started during the Bush administration..."

Don't ever doubt the media's relentless pushing of the narrative.

Post: #7

The real threat isn't them finding child porn, which is rather easy to avoid if you aren't a diddler. The threat is them planting it if you want to get you for some other reason.

Post: #8

On a side note,

I had an email attachment (nude) sent via email. The content itself was "flagged" somehow for being pornographic. It wasn't a link, it was the direct nude. Sketch

Post: #9

I like the place I go to in Mexico. They are inexpensive and if they don't find anything they don't charge me, like they do in the US. No worries about snooping. At least they haven't complained yet about my Trump pictures. The US is turning into a prison camp.

Post: #10

It is a good practice to store all sensitive information on external memory, just in case computer breaks down and has to go to repairs. Ideally computer memory should contain only programs, all data files should be on external memory and only copied on computer temporary for editing or in case of sensitive information not copied at all and edited on external drive.

Post: #11

Best practice is to have at least 2 physically separate harddrives. One can be smaller and is your designated "my computer" drive. This is where you install your windows and programs and basically that's it. The other one should be your documents drive which you could take out if you need

Post: #12

Avoid taking any of your storage device to computer repair shops. Or if you do, go with small independent business.

Never had any need for any computer repair because I use a PC which I built myself, so any damaged parts can be easily replaced. Most guys on RVF is proud on being able to fix their own car, so learn how to fix your computer too.

It goes without saying though that all kind of data you cant afford to lose, dont put it on one source of storage, especially one that people can easily hacked into.

About that, anyone knows any online data storage service that could be trusted?
I have all my important shit on 2 separate USBs, but it's not like you can always lug them around.

Post: #13

I bought a Samsung S7 Edge a few months back. It's developed a pink line down the right hand side of the screen. It's still under warranty so it can be fixed without cost, but I have to send it away for a week to be repaired, which I have not done.

I don't like sending my technology (phone/PC) to anyone to be repaired, be it Geek Squad, or any major manufacturer/IT repair company.

Sending my phone away to be fixed means I'll need to do a total wipe and backup for peace of mine (and even then), which is a serious pain in the ass.

I don't trust these people.

Post: #14

I'm a little surprised that this doesn't raise chain-of-custody issues. I guess computer forensics can piece together the whole story of what got downloaded when, but I wonder how they prove it wasn't fabricated.

A lot of guys think, "Oh, I got rid of the incriminating stuff by deleting it" but it's still in their recycle bin or wherever.

Post: #15

It's 20 fucking 17. If you can't take care of your own computer by this day and age, you deserve what is coming to you.

Seriously, computers are not the intimidating monsters they once were in the 90s and early 2000s.

How difficult is it to do this:
1. Buy external hard drive.
2. Connect external hard drive to USB port
3. Copy your files (and in this case: your kiddie porn) to the HD
4. Plop in your machine's OS disk or download Microsoft's free Windows 10 install media tool to do it for you.
5. Restart machine
6. Boot from install media
7. Follow the on screen prompts

Anytime I hear of crazy computer stories I laugh. Just a few months ago, a major talent agency got taken down by a virus infection. What level of incompetence leads to this? They ended up losing all of their documents and to top it off two major releases got leaked onto the internet!

For something that has the keys to your most sensitive information, an ounce of understanding how the damn thing works goes a bloody long way.

I'm old fashioned and feel the same way about my car, but unlike computers you can't just delete a car and reinstall.

Post: #16

I take pride in keeping my old ass shit in working order, though it may look like an old camaro with mismatched different color primered body pieces, it runs like a swiss watch.

Post: #17

(06-02-2017 11:53 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  I'm old fashioned and feel the same way about my car, but unlike computers you can't just delete a car and reinstall.

Sometimes the reason they take their computer to the shop is that their hard drive is failing and they can't get the data off of it without help. It can be a delicate situation, since the more you try to access the drive, the more data becomes inaccessible as the drive gets closer and closer to failing completely. At the place I worked, we used R-Studio for those situations where it was bad enough that the customer couldn't retrieve his data without help, but not yet bad enough that it would have to be sent off to one of those data recovery labs where they actually open up the drive in a clean room.

Of course, you can avoid that problem by using an SSD from the get-go, but people would rather get an HDD so they can have more storage space for the same price. Whenever we noticed a customer had a 1TB HDD and was only using, say, 100GB, we would try to upsell them on the 256GB SSD rather than suggesting they put a replacement 1TB HDD in there. Laptops get dropped so often that it's kinda ridiculous to rely on a laptop HDD for storage of anything important.

By the way, whenever any customer came in there, whether it was for virus removal or Windows upgrade or even something totally unrelated to the hard drive, the first thing we always did was create a copy of their hard drive, so that if we accidentally destroyed any data, we could always revert back to that. We had 100-200 hard drives lined up along the wall, each with a number, and we would save the image to whatever number hard drive we were on, and note the number in our records. We would go in sequence, and eventually end up back where we started and overwrite old backups.

We didn't necessarily tell customers about that, but even after we returned their computer to them, we retained a copy of their data, so if they ever accused us of deleting their data, we would have that backup available for CYA purposes. Of course, if the cops had served us with a warrant, we would've theoretically had to give that backup over to them. I think one time a customer's ex-wife did threaten to get a subpoena to retrieve data that she wanted to use in their divorce case. We were trying to figure out a way to dodge that whole situation, since we didn't want to get involved, but I don't think it ever came to anything.

Post: #18

(06-02-2017 12:41 PM)Jean Valjean Wrote:  

(06-02-2017 11:53 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  I'm old fashioned and feel the same way about my car, but unlike computers you can't just delete a car and reinstall.

Sometimes the reason they take their computer to the shop is that their hard drive is failing and they can't get the data off of it without help. It can be a delicate situation, since the more you try to access the drive, the more data becomes inaccessible as the drive gets closer and closer to failing completely. At the place I worked, we used R-Studio for those situations where it was bad enough that the customer couldn't retrieve his data without help, but not yet bad enough that it would have to be sent off to one of those data recovery labs where they actually open up the drive in a clean room.

Of course, you can avoid that problem by using an SSD from the get-go, but people would rather get an HDD so they can have more storage space for the same price. Whenever we noticed a customer had a 1TB HDD and was only using, say, 100GB, we would try to upsell them on the 256GB SSD rather than suggesting they put a replacement 1TB HDD in there. Laptops get dropped so often that it's kinda ridiculous to rely on a laptop HDD for storage of anything important.

By the way, whenever any customer came in there, whether it was for virus removal or Windows upgrade or even something totally unrelated to the hard drive, the first thing we always did was create a copy of their hard drive, so that if we accidentally destroyed any data, we could always revert back to that. We had 100-200 hard drives lined up along the wall, each with a number, and we would save the image to whatever number hard drive we were on, and note the number in our records. We would go in sequence, and eventually end up back where we started and overwrite old backups.

We didn't necessarily tell customers about that, but even after we returned their computer to them, we retained a copy of their data, so if they ever accused us of deleting their data, we would have that backup available for CYA purposes. Of course, if the cops had served us with a warrant, we would've theoretically had to give that backup over to them. I think one time a customer's ex-wife did threaten to get a subpoena to retrieve data that she wanted to use in their divorce case. We were trying to figure out a way to dodge that whole situation, since we didn't want to get involved, but I don't think it ever came to anything.

To be honest, in the case of the guy getting nabbed for kiddie porno if you were willingly engaging in kiddie porn why would you take your machine in for forensic data recovery? It seems entirely foolish and stupid. It's like using your car to store dead hookers and then taking it into a repair shop for a fix. They pop the trunk and then call the cops because oops you have dead hookers in there!

Secondly, 99.9% of all problems on a PC or a Smartphone can be resolved by wiping and re-installing everything. In my olden days doing deskside support, any time someone came in with a virus or some sort of infection we'd back up their documents and re-install everything. Turn around time was under 3 hours. We used to waste time cleaning registry entries, but we found it to be easier and faster to just start fresh.

Even today, anyone can do this at home. If your hard drive is failing, get a back up in ASAP and start making regular back ups.

As I said previously, for something that holds access to so much sensitive personal info if you don't have an ounce of prevention you deserve what happens. Same goes for a car with bald tires, nearly used up brake pads, and brake fluid that is darker than my morning coffee. It's part of the cost of doing business in this day and age. The best part about this comparison is that a care is infinitely more difficult to repair and fix! A computer is as easy and cheap as putting a disk into a drive.

No excuse, no sympathy.

Post: #19

Wow, thanks for the heads up OP, I hope Geek Squad gets punished in the marketplace for their cucking for Big Brother.

Post: #20

(06-02-2017 01:40 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  Sometimes the reason they take their computer to the shop is that their hard drive is failing and they can't get the data off of it without help.

Child porn downloaders aren't always known for being the sharpest tools in the shed. I knew a guy who told me some story about why he went to jail, and then eventually started hinting around that it had actually been something different, and then finally told what had happened. He'd downloaded a bunch of child porn off Limewire, and ended up getting caught up in a sting. They got a search warrant and seized his computers and he asked, "Aren't you going to arrest me" and they said, "No, that's not how this works, we're going to have to analyze what's on your hard drives first." Then while he was waiting for the outcome of that, he bought another computer and started downloading more child porn off Limewire. He got caught up in another sting, and the same cops raided his home again and seized that computer too and asked, "What are you, stupid?" It's not the greatest setup for being able to tell the judge, "I did something dumb once, but it would never happen again."

It reminds me of this other case, where a guy got busted in a child sex sting, got out of prison, and then got busted in another child sex sting run by the same detective who got him the first time around.

Post: #21

(06-02-2017 04:28 PM)Jean Valjean Wrote:  

(06-02-2017 01:40 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  Sometimes the reason they take their computer to the shop is that their hard drive is failing and they can't get the data off of it without help.

Child porn downloaders aren't always known for being the sharpest tools in the shed. I knew a guy who initially told me some story about why he went to jail, and then eventually started hinting around that it had actually been something different, and then finally told the whole story. He'd downloaded a bunch of child porn off Limewire, and ended up getting caught up in a sting. They got a search warrant and seized his computers and he asked, "Aren't you going to arrest me" and they said, "No, that's not how this works, we're going to have to analyze what's on your hard drives first." Then while he was waiting for the outcome of that, he bought another computer and started downloading more child porn off Limewire. He got caught up in another sting, and the same cops raided his home again and asked, "What are you, stupid?"

It reminds me of this other case.

Probably the reason I'm not a criminal. I'm too damn smart!

Post: #22

My theory is that kiddie porn is distributed by various government agencies in the first place. Who in their right mind would download it off of something like limewire anyway? Its just too easy to catch the perverts that do it.

They got a guy in my neighborhood during the limewire days, and we live a few miles from where Edward Snowden worked. Just stupid. And he was a good guy with a family. He was probably just looking at regular porn and curiosity got to him. Even if he survives prison, his life is over.

It is also my theory that the virus protection software companies are actually the ones that make and spread the viruses. But that's another discussion.

Aloha!

Post: #23

(06-02-2017 11:53 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  It's 20 fucking 17. If you can't take care of your own computer by this day and age, you deserve what is coming to you.

Seriously, computers are not the intimidating monsters they once were in the 90s and early 2000s.

How difficult is it to do this:
1. Buy external hard drive.
2. Connect external hard drive to USB port
3. Copy your files (and in this case: your kiddie porn) to the HD
4. Plop in your machine's OS disk or download Microsoft's free Windows 10 install media tool to do it for you.
5. Restart machine
6. Boot from install media
7. Follow the on screen prompts

Anytime I hear of crazy computer stories I laugh. Just a few months ago, a major talent agency got taken down by a virus infection. What level of incompetence leads to this? They ended up losing all of their documents and to top it off two major releases got leaked onto the internet!

For something that has the keys to your most sensitive information, an ounce of understanding how the damn thing works goes a bloody long way.

I'm old fashioned and feel the same way about my car, but unlike computers you can't just delete a car and reinstall.

I used to work in IT at a well known Christian university. Those kids would bring their computers in and we'd find all kinds of stuff. As long as it wasn't breaking any laws, we'd clean it up and hand it right back to them the next day. Usually with a text note on the desktop that suggested they lay off the porn and stop using shit sites to download their pirated music.

They'd usually show back up a month or so later with the same problem. We started implementing a 3x system. Wrote it into the waiver. Show up a third time with the same virus/malware problem, we'd give them 24 hours to find a backup solution then wipe it dead clean. If they didn't agree, we'd hand it back to them, direct them to Geek Squad, restrict their MAC addresses from accessing the network, and require a follow up inspection before we would lift the restriction.

They'd get pissed and bitch about having to pay for Geek Squad, not considering the fact that this was a service offered by the University free of charge and that they had already wasted our time twice. That place was chock full of a bunch of entitled shits, young and old.

Post: #24

Team SSD main drive, HDD for excess storage.

Post: #25

Back in 1998, I was messing around with Linux on my system. I ended up corrupting my partition table, although the hard drive was fine mechanically. I called OnTrack. They remoted into my system over a phone line and got my data back. I still recommend them for their work.

I've worked in tech for almost twenty years. I don't know any techie who has anything good to say about Best Buy. They sell nothing but junk. In fact, manufacturers make cheap products just so they can sell them to Best Buy. It's largely why I only buy NEC monitors. They aren't at Best Buy.