Users are reminded to read reviews about the repair shop and take steps to secure their device such as logging out of all accounts. — Using phone photo created by Dragana_Gordic - www.freepik.com
Samsung has announced that it will be adding a ‘Repair Mode’ feature to its smartphones that can be activated to prevent repair technicians from snooping, according to a report by SamMobile.
The report explained that the mode will be useful for those who have to leave their phones at service centres for repair but who may have concerns about how their personal data such as photographs or videos could be exposed.
With Repair Mode, users can decide which data will remain accessible to the repair technician. Once activated, the smartphone will be rebooted and after that, nobody can access the selected personal data. To exit Repair Mode, the user needs to reboot the device and authenticate using fingerprint or pattern recognition.
According to SamMobile which cited a news release by Samsung Korea, the feature will arrive via an update to the Galaxy S21 series first before being expanded to other models.
Repair technicians snooping into their customers’ devices is a serious privacy nightmare. In 2016, The Telegraph reported that iPhone repair technicians uploaded a customer’s nude photos to Facebook after she sent her phone for repair at a facility in the US. In 2021, Apple paid an undisclosed multimillion dollar sum in compensation to the customer, according to The Verge.
Most famously, Hong Kong actor Edison Chen saw some 1,300 intimate photos stolen from his computer after he sent it for repairs. In a 2008 report, Hong Kong police said during the maintenance period, a technician found the photos in Chen’s laptop. He later copied the images onto a compact disc. The images were then uploaded online.
The computer technician was jailed for eight and a half months after he was convicted for stealing the images from Chen’s laptop.
Experts told website LifeWire that sending devices for repairs can be risky due to the amount of personal data in it.
Users are reminded to read reviews about the repair shop and take steps to secure their device such as logging out of all accounts.
They can also use apps to lock certain files such as messages and photos with passwords. Users are also advised to create a full backup of their phone and then perform a factory reset before leaving the device at the repair centre.
