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Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

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Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#281

I've worked in these contract cellphone repair/refurbishment facilities many years ago, the big warehouses where telecoms and manufacturers send these warranty phones to be triaged and repaired, and let me tell you, something like this is not surprising at all. Most of the people there did good work, but all it takes is one. Personally I'd never send my phone in to repair, and I'm skittish about buying any refurbishe…

Years ago I had some friends who worked in a local photo shop, and once I stopped by and they showed me around. This was in the days when 99% of the population developed film and made prints by dropping off the little canisters at such shops with an order form. It usually took a few days to get them back.

Everyone made assumptions that the process for developing photos was anonymous and private - you dropped off a canister, and picked up photos and negatives in a clean, sealed envelope a few days later.

How wrong we were.

The process was semi-automated using these gargantuan machines in a back room, but the staff usually looked at each frame as went through the process. They made extra copies of spicy ones which went straight into a special binder kept on a nearby shelf. This shop had two or three of these binders.

Some years later I was in another country and photographed violent demonstrations right outside the hostel where I was staying. When I went to pick up the photos, the staff made it clear that they had seen the images. They were supportive (they wanted to get the word out internationally) but what if copies had been sent to the local intelligence services instead?

Nowadays the tech is different, but when there are no barriers to viewing private information, we see similar types of behavior.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#282

I've lost a laptop in an airport shuttle with intimate pics on it once, and got worried sick. After that life lession, I always made sure to have a veracrypt partition for this stuff. But a separate, offline device is better of course.

Would windows Bitlocker work too? My issue is that Veracrypt requires you to mount a drive, while Bitlocke provides protection over the whole drive (barring your adversaries being Microsoft and/or the NSA).

I just tried Bitlocker for the first time a few days ago. I enabled it, and next time I booted it up, it never asked for my password. It turns out it only protects the drive if it's removed from the computer.

I just used VeraCrypt instead.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#283
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a limitation of our ability to have constructive conversations online. Someone can be less than perfect and that can cause them to be victimized. We should be able to talk about both aspects of this story, perhaps independently. Some people want to discuss how the offender should be punished, and other people want to discuss how we can behave to prevent being victimized ourselves. I don't think it's v…

Absolutely. "They deserved it for sending in an unwiped phone" is victim blaming. "If you need to send in your phone, you can do X and Y to protect yourself" is absolutely NOT victim blaming. I cannot wrap my mind around why people would have a problem with the second statement.

> I cannot wrap my mind around why people would have a problem with the second statement.

When the problem is that the phone was borked to the point that X and Y were not possible, it's tonedeaf at the very least.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would windows Bitlocker work too? My issue is that Veracrypt requires you to mount a drive, while Bitlocke provides protection over the whole drive (barring your adversaries being Microsoft and/or the NSA).

I just tried Bitlocker for the first time a few days ago. I enabled it, and next time I booted it up, it never asked for my password. It turns out it only protects the drive if it's removed from the computer. I just used VeraCrypt instead.

Really? My Bitlocker setup requires me to enter in a password to unlock the drive.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, all the user data, like pictures could be placed on the sd by default.

But if the phone doesn't come with a card pre-installed, people are going to complain that it doesn't work, or that they didn't know they had to purchase a card. Unless it comes with a card, but the card is not inserted, so the user has to do it before booting up the phone

Or, provide a simple and clear way, to move all the user data to the card, first time it is inserted.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#286

I'm sick of people, so I'm not going to read the inevitable comments that are going to come. Look, face it, some people like taking nude photos of themselves and they like sharing them with their partners. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's not their fault if something like this happens. People should be able to feel secure in the tech that they use, in the companies that they entrust their information…

Some people no doubt engage in victim blaming, but I don't think that's what's generally going on here. For instance, I don't think anyone would disagree that the individuals that made those photos public should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The world contains bad actors, and we should be having conversations about what are the reasonable steps people should take to protect themselves. The fact that this happened, and that it could easily happen again, suggests that we should take additional care with sensitive data on our phones. Maybe an app for encrypting sensitive photos and that requires a password to access?

Yes, people should feel safe in their tech. People should also feel safe in their homes, but most everyone still have locks, and many people additional layers of security.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent days going through every blog post I could find for tips on how to fix it, including booting to recovery mode -- it would reboot as I scrolled through the recovery menu and even when I got as far as trying to do the factory reset, it would reboot before it even started the reset. I let it reboot itself until it ran out of battery and waited a day after that to let it completely drain. Even tried putting it in…

Apologies then. I agree you were out of options.

Even the IT guy at work was stymied, he was sure he'd be able to at least factory reset it and get it working again.... he gave up after a few hours.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#288
post #132

This isn’t OP fault but it boggles my mind that people still use google products. How many times do companies like google and Facebook need to show that they don’t have your best interest at heart before you stop using their products? People won’t even buy genetically modified food but yet they have no problem shelling out thousands of dollars to authoritarian, surveillance centric parasites. Please stop.

Same sh*t on Apple side though: https://www.news18.com/news/tech/apple-gives-student-million... Not sure about other manufacturers. The safest thing is to buy a phone made to be repaired, like a Fairphone IMO.

Weird, I feel like I've searched for something like Fairphone many times and never found it. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#289

I've worked in these contract cellphone repair/refurbishment facilities many years ago, the big warehouses where telecoms and manufacturers send these warranty phones to be triaged and repaired, and let me tell you, something like this is not surprising at all. Most of the people there did good work, but all it takes is one. Personally I'd never send my phone in to repair, and I'm skittish about buying any refurbishe…

I had to buy dozens of old phones on eBay once for testing a new SMS product and I can tell you that most of the phones were not wiped and lots had naughty photos and videos still on them :|

Maybe because thieves can't be assed to wipe the phone before putting on ebay?

Re: Pixel sent to Google for replacement. They used it to post wife's nudes online

#290

It was deleted. Here is the OG Text: "Ok so this just happened. Buckle up. About a month ago my wife broke her pixel phone. It couldn't be turned on so we couldn't wipe it. We contact Google and used the device care to get an RMA. Today someone posted nude pictures of my wife and I to her social media accounts. They accessed her Google account and tried to lock us out. They used her PayPal to send someone $5 (a test…

I had an issue with my pixel and had to send it in. The phone got ran over by a car and was smashed. It could be turned on but I could not do a factory reset. I have financial and other private information on it. So the first thing I did was try to keep it on for days until the battery ran out to see if the hardware encryption would help secure the data. After that I still wasn't sure if the information was secure enough so I took a drill through it to destroy as many of the ICs that I could. My wife then pointed out that maybe this self destruction that I did would violate some terms and void the insurance even though the phone was useless after being run over by the car. So, in the end, I decided to just buy a new phone without doing a trade in or insurance claim. The $500 or so was worth not risking PI.
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