Sending a smartphone to the manufacturer for repair is sometimes absolutely necessary. But it’s not without risk. Explanation.
No one will give their smartphone into the hands of a complete stranger if they think that the latter can steal and / or publish their personal data. However, recent reports show that this is exactly what the Apple and Google repair crews are doing. Explanation.
Author and video game designer Jane McGonigal is the latest “public”victim of this practice, namely recovering a repairable smartphone and using it to obtain personal data. According to Jane McGonigal’s tweet, the phone appears to have been “lost”at a Google repair center. So she bought a new one. A few weeks later, the allegedly lost phone was used to access photos and other sensitive data. The victim also explains that the thief “viewed several selfies in the hope of finding nudity,”according to the activity logs.
This has happened before, and not just with Pixel owners. There are many similar stories in the replies to Jane McGonigal’s original tweet. Photos, data, and even money were stolen through phones sent to Google for repairs. Last June, Apple agreed to pay $2 million to a woman who was robbed of nude photos that were posted online by technicians working on her phone.
Luckily, Apple and Google have decided to let their customers do a certain amount of home repairs themselves. However, today sending a smartphone to the manufacturer for repair remains the only option for many. So how do you prevent your own data and files from being stolen by techies, thieves, and whoever ends up gaining access to your device?
Obviously, the most effective measure is to not store sensitive data on your devices. Unfortunately, this is not always feasible. We all have personal data on our devices and we wouldn’t want it to fall into the hands of strangers. And we’re not just talking about naked bodies here. Financial information, passwords and the like are also at risk.
It is for this reason that it is necessary to take the time to prepare the smartphone before sending it in for repair. The most important thing is to move sensitive data. You can send them to a cloud that’s not linked to your Google Drive or iCloud account, or even to your local hard drive. And if it’s encrypted, even better. After that, disable all your accounts and, if possible, perform a factory reset.
But it won’t help if the device is unusable or if you’ve already submitted it. In these cases, sign in to your different accounts from a different device, turn on two-factor authentication and sign-in alerts whenever possible. Change your passwords. You can also see which devices are connected to your Google or iCloud accounts. If you’re getting suspicious connection or activity alerts, you can use Apple’s Find My app or Android’s Find My Phone feature to disable devices remotely from your browser.
Unfortunately, these solutions are not guaranteed. As we saw with Jane McGonigal, the thief knew how to hide what he was doing and prevent the victim from trying to figure out what was going on. In any case, monitoring your accounts can help prevent outsiders from accessing your data.