Yes, Geek Squad can search your files and hand you over to the police

Interesting Jasper,
 
I was just wondering if someone could use your computer as a server to put porn or child abuse photos on? Probably not in this case since the photo was deleted before giving it to Best Buy/Geek Squad.
 
EDITED: I read here:
Even a technical expert for the prosecutors conceded in court that dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of sex images can be uploaded without the knowledge of those surfing the internet. Those images can be discovered only with special software, the expert said in a hearing with Judge Carney, according to OC Weekly.

@ wrote:

@ wrote:
Interesting Jasper,
 
I was just wondering if someone could use your computer as a server to put porn or child abuse photos on? Probably not in this case since the photo was deleted before giving it to Best Buy/Geek Squad.
 
EDITED: I read here:
Even a technical expert for the prosecutors conceded in court that dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of sex images can be uploaded without the knowledge of those surfing the internet. Those images can be discovered only with special software, the expert said in a hearing with Judge Carney, according to OC Weekly.

There have been quite a few cases where a persons computer has had pics etc loaded on without their knowledge. I remember a case in maybe about 2006 where if my memory serves me right a teacher was being prosecuted for posessing pornographic material and some experts from some security forums were going to give evidence in her defence that it could be done without her knowing.

Thanks for confirmation Jasper!:D

Baldrick wrote:.

Having said that the question in my book is where does one draw the line with regard to invasion of privacy? In my book if there is no earthly reason for the disk to be scanned forensically then a repairer doing so is guilty of invasion of privacy/obtaining information unlawfully or without the owners persmission, etc.

My first thought when reading this article was, "What in the hell was Geek Squad doing searching UNALLOCATED space on this HDD?"
 
If one has ever run a recovery tool to try and recover photos or files that were deleted they know that there are hundreds, if not, thousands, of pictures residing on your hard drive that you never, ever saw, much less, downloaded. Some sites will cache hundreds of images from it, even from pages you didn't visit. I was very alarmed to see a few, what I would describe as soft-porn images (topless photos mostly, nothing overly obscene), on one of my hard drives after running one of these tools. My first thought was, WHOA, if this had been kiddie-porn I could have been in deep crap. The images were intermingled with the regular cached images that DID appear on sites I had visited. Just regular news sites, too, not anything where you would expect to find such images. Pretty scary, I remember thinking. And what's to stop hackers, or even a disgruntled co-worker, from putting illegal images on your computer and then 'tipping' the police to the issue. Talk about a 'Pandora's Box'. Yikes! :S
 
I will never shop at Best Buy, thats's for sure. I think I've only bought something from them once, but that will be the only time. It won't be long until Best Buy morphs into some other chain of Big-box stores, as seems to be the pattern for these types of stores. Or. if we're lucky, the Internet will just put them out of business.
 
BD