How private is your info with Apple Store Geniuses?

I know that the Geek Squad has been accused of looking at people's hard drives and doing who knows what else. Is it safe to assume Apple is more careful about that kind of stuff with people's computers?

It has to be somewhere in their privacy policy, or they could be sued if that is true.

BlueMac said:

It has to be somewhere in their privacy policy, or they could be sued if that is true.

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It is in their privacy policy. It specifically says your data is exposed. I didn't know they were going to ask for my admin username/password when I brought it in.

I am just wondering if anyone who knows/is a Genius has any insight.

Apple employee's aren't allowed to talk about that kind of material, though...

BlueMac said:

Apple employee's aren't allowed to talk about that kind of material, though...

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I understand that. But there are always disgruntled ex-employees. You see these posts all the time by former Best Buy or Gamestop Employees who let out these secrets about the crap they pull.

I am not all that concerned, I trust Apple and would think they have more class than that, I was just paranoid and curious.

I can't see why the Apple employees would be different to anyone else.
Some people are nosey. I would not recommend ever giving anyone else the password needed to access any personal data on your hard drive. If you absolutely must give it in for service, you could always put your personal files in a password-protected zip file before handing it in.

The two times I had to take my fiance's Mini in for service I cloned the HDD and then reformatted it, just to be safe. I am a little bit more paranoid than most though I guess.

If its there you can't help to see if some times. I trust apple thought, they won't deliberately go hunting.

Mark W said:

I can't see why the Apple employees would be different to anyone else.
Some people are nosey. I would not recommend ever giving anyone else the password needed to access any personal data on your hard drive. If you absolutely must give it in for service, you could always put your personal files in a password-protected zip file before handing it in.

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Pretty hard to do that when your video card is what is dead. I have a one year old MBP with a bad video card.

If it's anything like the place I used to work, the technicians a) have language in their contracts to prevent abuse of customer data and b) are much to busy to go poking around in your files.

Obviously that would still not stop a rogue employee from abusing your data, but I get the sense that in the corporate culture at Apple (and the place I worked) that sort of behaviour would be reported to management fairly quickly by colleagues.

It's hard to peg group of people in a specific job role especially when there are thousands of them.

My guess, and my experiences confirmed, apple employees at the retail stores are just like any other person. You have the nice honorable smart ones that are easy to trust, the idiots who make you want to go to jail for assault and battery, then you have the dishonest ones.

There seems to be all types of flavors and just because their name tag says apple doesn't mean anything special.

That's right, Terrible1one3. A common stereotype because people think that since Apple is "Such a kool cumpany I <3 their stufff" doesn't mean they are all great people.