T-Mobile sued after employee stole nude images from customer phone during trade-in::T-Mobile has been sued again for failing to protect consumer data after an employee at one of its Washington stores stole nude images off of a customer’s phone.
The employee was and is a scum bag human, but what dumbass trades a phone with nudes on it‽ I wouldn’t even get a phone serviced with nudes.
Most people aren’t all that clear on the distinction of things being “on” a phone. When they switch to their next phone and their photos immediately sync onto it from whatever cloud stuff they use, they may have the illusion that the new phone is where their photos “are” now and not consider the continuing existence of the data on the old one.
Basic technical literacy should be everyone’s responsibility and would be in a perfect world, but any IT person will tell you that it can never be assumed of anyone. However on the bright side, stories like this blowing up in the mainstream news will knock a little awareness into more end-user skulls every now and then. Send it to all the non-techies you know and care about!
After being in IT for a decade it never ceases to amaze me how incompetent people are when it comes to tech.
At my first gig in NYC I worked at a smaller financial firm (about 100 people) and every mid-level and above employee was given a work phone. One time I got a ticket that said “my smartphone is being really slow, can someone please take a look?”. I went up there and it was a guy in his 40s (I was like 30), suit and tie, I think he was a Junior VP or something like that. He gave me his Galaxy S5 and I looked at the RAM usage and it was all taken up by Chrome. I opened up Chrome and he had 99+ tabs open, I told him that was the reason and he said “Oh… I thought those automatically closed when I exited (he meant switched apps, not killing the process)…”, I told him they didn’t and started swiping them away, after the first few it was about 90 tabs of (teen) porn 🤣. I had to stand there in front of him, straight faced for a good few minutes cleaning up his porn. Afterwards I said “it should be better now, just remember to close your tabs when you’re finished with them.” and left. Once I got in the elevator I nearly pissed myself laughing so hard.
That’s awesome. Reminds me of having to tell an SVP that yes, per his demand, I did take his request to keep sharing music online illegally at work. He didnt seem to accept that the legal letters the form received meant he needed to change anything.
What could have been an ‘oh shit, my bad’ and noone has to know - turned into the entire leadership weighed in to direct me to delete the files and tools and be very clear he was putting his employment at risk.
The poor man’s ego. He seemed to think the IT guy didn’t have the ability to speak to him like that. Even insisted I tell him in front of two of his staff as a power play
I’ve seen too many guys, even those in “respectable” positions like executives or club captains, just leave their porn tabs open before asking me for some help with their phones.
When I asked them to open up their browser they would straight up open it up to a previously opened porn tab and start to panic. And somehow, the porn site that opened is always XNXX, lol. Pornhubs’ banned here and I guess XNXX just become popular instead.
I’m not gonna lie I do this too. Not leaving porn tabs open, but not closing apps/tabs. Android should automatically clean these up afaik.
Someone needs to share this to !bestoflemmy@lemmy.world
after the first few it was about 90 tabs of (teen) porn
I better hope you saved the links. Just asking for a friend.
Sad but true.
As one of those IT people (who was taught on punched cards), I’d had some hope that by the 21st century only GenX and Boomers would have this issue.
That young adults don’t know this stuff is very frustrating.
Most people cant explain how a toaster works - it may as well be magic to them.
There is actually a theory floating around, that people growing up in the 80ies-2000 were the most tech literate, because they had to tinker to get thinks to work. Want to play a game on DOS 6.2 and it did not work? Edit some system files for more memory. Today the technisch hidden behind false physics and got really well.
My son is nine. I got him a Kano (the old one with a raspberry pie as base) and he has to learn why we need to connect a display to the processing unit and connect peripherals to do things. His friends own a tablet, a smartphone and a gaming console. You cannot see behind the tech in those, if you don’t want to destroy them and explore hobbit works (on a basic level).
It’s genuinely crazy. I’ve had to remove viruses from my friends (16 or 17 at the time) and just didn’t understand. Why are you allowing things to make admin changes? Or just having to explain the difference to people what a “zip drive” is and a USB drive. As things get more “convenient” tech literacy definitely goes down.
Back when I was in college (mid to late 2000s) I worked in the campus computer lab. People frequently asked “how do I print stuff?” because they had to pay for it ($25 was included, it was to stop people from printing out a few hundred page books for free), they just had to swipe their ID at a touchscreen terminal, select the print jobs and hit “print”.
This girl came over asking this question and I repeated the above, then she said “No… how do I print from the computer?”. I was dumbfounded because this was a very large statue university that didn’t accept just anyone. It was Microsoft Word (when they switched from the menu bar to that stupid start menu style button in the upper left hand corner) and she had zero clue how to use it. I was thinking “damn girl, how did you make it through high school and get accepted here?!”. She was apparently your typical hot blonde airhead.
People forget, my ex sold her laptop on eBay, but forgot to wipe it and it had a bunch of nudes she had sent me over the years on it. After she realized what she did she told him to wipe the computer because she forgot to 🤦♂️ this was like a decade ago before BitLocker/encryption was standard on most laptops. The dude definitely saw her naked.
I had a friend leave her laptop with me for some maintenance. I think it was probably a reformat or something? I return her laptop, and she asks “have you seen my photos in folder X on the desktop?”. I responded “no, why would I”. She went “oh, such a shame” and made a “cartoonish” pouty face. From the conversation that followed, they were “raunchy”.
Like, bruh, I won’t be looking into your data. Want me to see something, send it to me straight, don’t expect me to snoop around lol
I worked for sprint in a retail store for 3 years, and the number of people that handed me their phones with their own nudes as the backgrounds was shocking.
So what do you do if you literally cant wipe the phone I.e broken screen? Just never have anything there to begin with?
Phones these days are encrypted. If you ever set up a pin/password to unlock your phone, that means it’s encrypted. Just make sure your phone is powered off or restarted (or battery drained, if the off button isn’t working), before you drop it off at the repair shop.
No one can access your files in this state - not even the manufacturer (unless there’s backdoor, but that’s a different topic - but even then, there are many “secure folder” type apps you could use to encrypt sensitive data).
If it’s just a broken screen, Google your way in learning how to repair it yourself.
Or, find a shop that will repair it in front of you the whole time. Pay extra if need be
Or, if the material is too sensitive and the above options aren’t viable:
- accept the loss and destroy the phone. Or,
- accept that whatever is in there will be viewed
The good thing with a problem like this is that your options are limited. So there’s not a whole hell of a lot of decision tree making you need to do.
Remote wipes are possible. Log into your Apple/Google account, figure out how to find your device, then perform a remote wipe.
Youve never actually had that happen if you think its that easy.
Guys no…
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You cant wipe a phone remotely with your google sign on unless “find my device” is enabled, which it never was.
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My phone does not just give access automatically to any device plugged into it. You are REQUIRED to give permission from the phone. Which cant be done because the screen is fucked.
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Your phone SHOULDNT be accessible in this scenario because allowing any device to just plug in and download everything with no authentication is a security risk.
Simple, Could’ve broken it beyond use after taking the noods. Possibly due to holding it an awkward position to get them sick porn angles.
