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How Best Buy’s Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat

posted by martyb on Saturday June 13 2015, @08:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-Milliner-Time! dept.

Phoenix666 writes with an interesting anecdote posted on Ars Technica:

We put a lot of trust in big companies, so when they let us down it can have serious consequences.

I recently went shopping for a new computer. I wanted a low-end laptop for light work, and the HP Stream seemed like a good deal. That deal was made even sweeter when Best Buy offered to sell me a returned one for almost 20 percent off. The salesman assured me that it was in like-new condition and that they would honor all warranties. Sold.

I always get a little thrill opening a new gadget. The computer looked like it had never been touched and all the paperwork was still in sealed bags. There was even a slip of paper in the box with the ID of the tech who cleaned and certified the unit.

So it surprised me when I booted up and saw someone else's name and Hotmail address at the login prompt. So much for like-new!

As I stared at the full name and e-mail address of the previous owner—let's call him David—I wondered. Could I get into this computer another way? It was mine after all. And how much more could I learn about him? How bad of a mistake had the store made?

Any similar stories out there Soylentils care to share?

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  • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Saturday June 13 2015, @09:58PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Saturday June 13 2015, @09:58PM (#195898) Journal

    I've got what's perhaps a different situation. The local computer repair shop I once worked at had ancient, ancient hard disks left over. One of them, a small IDE drive of around 20MB, I took home. I later plugged it into a test box here, and almost immediately my AV identified and removed a boot sector virus. It looks like it was running MS-DOS 2.0, and has a number of old letters and documents on it. There's no identification or repair shop identification on the drive itself, but I have thought of returning the data to the drive's prior owners. I suspect though, that the best thing to do would be to go via the shop's owner (still the same guy) and have him return the data.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @11:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @11:13PM (#195913)

    I know there is lost data from some of my old disks I really wish I could recover.

    For average people who lost it through 'average' problems, it is often a huge boon.