Surface in for Repairs
I’ve got a giant crack across my Surface Pro so I had to take it in to get the glass replaced. I’ve never had to take in an electronic device for repairs before. To be honest, I’m a little nervous. I’m afraid they’ll find my smutty drawings and I’ll have to explain them. I’ve got it locked down with a crazy password but I’m still scared. I’ve heard of not so fun stories of third parties finding furry porn on computers and them not taking to kindly to it. I did back up all my files and photoshop stuff and did everything except format the thing. It’s pretty much a blank computer again. Do I have a legit worry here… Or am I crazy?
Play Asia
June 13th, 2014 at 6:19 pm
Assuming they’re not nosy, I couldn’t imagine why they would need to even turn the thing on.
June 13th, 2014 at 6:27 pm
Should be fine, tech guys are are quite pervy, I used to work with geek squad and they loved stuff like that
June 13th, 2014 at 7:10 pm
I’ll second this. Most techy guys I’ve known have been pervy. Not really a bad thing mind. It’s fun to be amused by stuff found on computers (And I’ve heard quite a bit people DON’T realize they leave when giving away a computer)
June 14th, 2014 at 5:57 am
Yeah… but it only takes one ‘righteous’ zealot to take a disliking to one’s things to cause more problems than a little backup, wipe, and restore are worth.
June 14th, 2014 at 12:01 am
Hey.
Meaby one of them is your fan and he will give
extra special care of your surface when he finds
your stuff 😛
June 14th, 2014 at 7:08 am
Included a tl;dr version at bottom. Not as informative, but much less verbose/tangent-laden and will lengthen your day.
***
I don’t know enough to say whether your concerns are legit, but I’d have done the same in your shoes. So, you’re not crazy (at least, relative to me…). Especially in light of where you live–I love Canada for many things, but you guys have some odd ‘moral’ legal impositions (not that we don’t have our own).
I’m actually a little surprised that you keep smutty stuff on your main computer. Do you encrypt it? You said that you have some password protection, but that doesn’t guarantee that people with certain privileges can’t access it. For instance, my main account is password protected since it has administration status, but my wife also is an administrator and can see into the non-encrypted files on my account.
Given that I use my computer at work and when around my friends/family, I’ve started keeping all of my smutty things on an external portable hard-drive. I’d recommend you do something similar. The whole drive is encrypted to protect anyone who finds it from my perversions. I even run my smut-viewing browser from it (handy, cause then I can keep all of the bookmarks in the open). This ensures, or at least greatly increases the likelihood, that I’ll never accidentally share something with friends/co-workers/others when using my computer.
Not sure if this is practical for you, but given your circumstances, I’d at least look into it. Also, if you make sure to have all of the smutty things write/read directly to the external drive, then you don’t have to worry (much) about phantom files remaining on your main drive when you erase them. One of the problems with ‘evidence’ erasers is that they (sometimes) only erase the most recent iteration of the files (better ones will be more thorough). If the hard-drive has been reorganized–say, via defragmentation–then there can be partial and even whole copies of files that will not be written-over when the erasing process is done. To ensure that you’ve gotten everything, you can just erase all of the empty space (which a good program should have done–though, this has the downside of getting rid of files you might have wanted to recover). However, I think it’s better to be overly precautious and just not have it on the main drive at all.
If this is not possible or is too inconvenient, you might try adding another user account to the computer and seeing if you can encrypt the home folder (not sure what you call it on a Windows machine). If the operating system is properly set up, this should make it the case that all of the files that are created/stored/etc… in this account are encrypted by the login password, and no-one, not even other admins, can see it without that account password or the computer’s master-pass.
I don’t care all that much about my wife seeing what I’ve got on my computer (she is aware of most of my kinks), but I’d hate for some third party to see what I’ve got saved. Even if what I have is not illegal, it could still cause other issues. For instance, accidentally letting it out that I have copy of your Vanellope X-mas (or any particular one) pic probably wouldn’t go over well with my employer, and they might see fit to release me because such public knowledge could cause workplace unease.
I might sound overly worried (bordering on paranoid?), but I really love my job. Unfortunately, this kind of thing could absolutely ruin it. Similarly, I’d recommend as much precaution as possible for anyone in any position to lose what is important to them due to societal ‘moral’ repugnance.
***
P.S. I don’t think you need to worry all that much. All of this is meant to be advice on ways that you can greatly reduce the chance of anything like what you are concerned about ever happening. If you’ve deleted all of the questionable stuff, then you ought to be okay. Not sure about the legality of the issue, but I don’t think it is usually acceptable for technicians to browse through unnecessary files on a customer’s drive. Deleted files (unless you are going in for recovery) are probably unnecessary. Given that you are having your screen fixed, I doubt they’ll need to look through more than some system files (drivers?) at most. Wouldn’t sweat it much. (Realize that probably sounds odd after everything else I’ve said–still stick with my recommendations.)
Best!
P.P.S Please excuse any linguistic screw-ups. It is long, and I’m sure I missed a few things in proofreading.
***
tl;dr
No, you are not crazy. Given your societal circumstances you should take every precaution to ensure that your hobby cannot affect your life (especially because of others’ knee-jerk biases).
Recommendations (in case you already haven’t):
-Keep all smut (and other questionable material) off of the main drive (use encrypted external hard drive, and read/write directly from it).
-Run questionable-material browser from external drive.
-If external drive too much trouble, look into an alternate account on your main drive that can have its content encrypted.
June 17th, 2014 at 2:47 pm
I have to agree with previous comments, that while the pictures may not be illegal and most computer people are pervs, all part of that natural curiosity that goes with learning complex things. Technicians can be nosy especially people prone to moral outrage. Something about its not good enough that they follow there values because they can’t control themselves they just have to control you. Look at Paul Ruebens he got caught wankin it in an Adult Theatre and it hurt his career because one of the cops got outraged and leaked it to the press. PGP or some other good program to encrypt and wipe your hard drive so deleted files don’t magically reappear. The encrypted external drive was another good suggestion. Because lack of physical control means no security, basically they have access to the drive and can bang on it with utilities for cracking stuff, doesn’t help them with wiped files like when you use PGP to scrub the blank space.
Sorry for the monologue and add. Not affiliated with PGP. And others might suggest better.
June 17th, 2014 at 10:46 pm
I apologize and want to make a correction Norton owns PGP and it only does drive encryption. However to wipe the drive you need another utility. disk wipe can do it but I’m gonna warn you their main page tries to get you to download a bunch of other software. To just download go to http://www.diskwipe.org/download.php the link on their main page says download and is at the top of the page. It is a self contained program, meaning you can run it from a flash drive.
June 25th, 2014 at 10:09 pm
Man, this is all good info. I really should learn how to encrypt things and wipe them properly should I need to. I do use a file shredder but I don’t know how good it is. No need for strangers to get my porn drawing if there are ways to shield it. Thanks for all the great tips!
September 7th, 2014 at 10:21 pm
A an IT tech it is policy to avoid opening anything on a computer that does not involve the repair or upgrade. To violate this would mean being fired.
To find kiddy porn as a desktop image however I would be required by policy to report or be considered an accomplice, to having or storing illegal material.
September 7th, 2014 at 10:22 pm
* aided in storing.
September 20th, 2014 at 9:44 pm
If you have kiddie porn as your desktop and you take it in for repairs… well maybe it’s best that you get busted. I am not, NOT, advocating kiddie porn. hidden or in desktop form.