Exposed: the PC repair shops that rifle through your photos and passwords
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By Sky News Reporter
Posted on 22 Jul 2009 at 12:03
He also discovers our holiday photos and copies those of our researcher in her bikini. The spy software takes a snapshot of the files on his memory stick. One is called "MAMMA JAMMAS" (urban slang for females with large breasts). It contains more holiday snaps of girls in their bikinis.
Most worryingly, when he discovers log-in details for our online bank account, he logs onto the bank's website and attempts to break into the account. He only fails because the details we created were false.
Laptop Revival declined to comment when confronted by Sky's cameras.
Covering up
There were similar problems with Digitech in Putney. Although its staff fixed our fault, they also spent a while snooping. The webcam reveals the technician takes a quick look over his shoulder, before flicking through our holiday pictures. He then attempts to clean up what he's done by deleting the Recent Documents folder. Digitech later told Sky that it was looking at the photos to test the memory.
There were also difficulties with PC World in Brentford. The technician triumphantly diagnosed a faulty motherboard and insisted we needed a new one. We were told unless we paid £230 in advance, we couldn't have it repaired. We agreed. But when we collected the laptop and got it home, we discovered only a memory chip had been replaced and not the motherboard.
PC World said the technician "should not have made an assumption about the cause of the fault of the laptop" and offered to refund £200 of the repair fee.
Bungled repairs
Meanwhile, at Evnova Computers in Barbican the loose memory chip was also spotted and fixed. But the company also told us we needed a new motherboard. We declined the offer and collected our laptop. When we examined it, we discovered technicians had soldered the memory bus pins together to recreate the original fault. Evnova later claimed it believed we were from a rival repair company.
We also had issues with Micro Anvika on London's Tottenham Court Road. It seems the company fixed our laptop then called us to claim it needed to examine the machine to find the fault. We were charged £145. All this for a loose memory chip. Micro Anvika later told us we should only have been charged £95.
Only one shop performed flawlessly. Pix 4 in Shepherds Bush took its time to carefully examine our machine while we waited. The staff promptly discovered the loose chip, popped it back into place and told us with a smile there would be no charge.
Prepare for repairs
So a word of warning. Always back up sensitive data and remove it from your laptop before taking it to be repaired (if you can). Clear the cache of log-in details and passwords and always get more than one quote.
And bear in mind technicians often place all objects in the world into one of two categories: things that need to be fixed and things that will need to be fixed after they've had a few minutes to play with them.
See Sky News's video report on the repair shops here
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I know a company that does this everyday. They dont steal peoples details i have to make that clear now but they do misdiagnosed and look throught peoples personal files. i know this to be a fact because i work for this company and am fed up with how they work and currently looking for somewhere else to work.
By Wacky17 on 5 Oct 2009 
Is Morality dead?!? Not at TheITPitStop.com!
It seems these companies truly have no morality, and should be exposed! Theitpitstop.com is constantly trying to ensure our engineers are educated in best practices and nobility. Good will is priceless, and something small companies should thrive on. Wacky17: If you want a job, get in touch ;)
By TheITPitStop on 24 Jan 2011
Tricky One
I am a computer technician. I work on computers every day. Some faults do not require the looking at of private data. What these people are doing is totally wrong.
However, some jobs would require looking at data. For example, if a customer asked me to format the hard drive and backup their data for them, I would then need to look at some of that data once restored, to make sure it did not get corrupted in any way. Yes you can do checks without looking, but a quick view of photos or documents makes sure everything is ok. I would hate to think I was being spied on and then accused of something I was not doing for the wrong reasons. Just the other side of the coin here.
By technicalguy on 19 May 2011
Dear technical guy
where about in the uk are you? i keep taking my laptop to pc world to be fixed but everytime they dont charge me.. and my mom comes back so chuffted that they didnt charge to fix it.. but the thing is they didnt do ANYTHING THATS WHY, last time my laptop broke the guy just removed the symptoms of the problem(it was a virus that made itself show up on my webpage toolbar) well the virus was still there i checked my laptop and found it again:/ all he did was hide it, in the end i had to recover my laptop.
im having a problem with it running slow, and the cabels got a hole in and the laptop wont charge past 78%, i've turned it off with the battery out and pressed the on button for 20 seconds but still nothing, if you're near where i live maybe you could help me out!? or maybe you know someone who could? theres another technician near me but he CHARGES for doing nothing:/
By needhelp on 7 Jul 2011
it's not unusual
We hear horror stories all the time like this. They are giving the industry a bad name. But not every repair company is a bad apple.
Gary
confidentialPCrepairs
By ConfidentialPCrepairs on 8 Jul 2011
Nothing new
Also some repair shops may do the dirty on a unsuspecting person by swapping out and changing parts with inferior hardware and that person would be none the wiser.
By meman on 8 Aug 2011
Its disgusting...
I hate people are having their trust broken by these rogues traders. I have many clients who have recently switched to us because of these exact issues like local companies. As a small IT firm, honesty and great customer service is what brings in the customers - at least thats whats working for us.
By JMVSolutions on 15 Sep 2011
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