This is one of the big reasons why.

There's a few things that make this pretty unlikely. Google doesn't triage or repair the phones themselves, they contract it out just like everyone else. And the people they contract it out to almost certainly have procedures in place which are meant to ensure that neither the devices themselves nor the data on them get out.

I'm not saying it's false, but I would definitely take it with a grain of salt.

That said, before you send any devices in for repair, you should wipe them to the best of your ability. Also, you should set a secure password (PIN, pattern, etc) - even if you set your device to not lock, you can encrypt/require password on startup, which would prevent the repairperson from seeing the photos much less posting them.

1. Use a password and encryption 2. If you can still turn on the device, wipe it before you send it off for an RMA. 3. If you can't access the device, login to your account online and remove access to it. You should do this even after you wipe it. 4. Save everything sensitive on removable storage medium by default.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/gethelp

(In french and probably most other languages.

And it was an utter shock. Not only the fact that the photo shop employees had a window into our private lives and were saving copies for future reference, but what other people's private lives were like. "Spicy" ran the gamut from wife nudes to borderline Blue Velvet.

It was one of those 10-minute experiences that totally shifts one's understanding of the world.

I have done the same with old or failed hard drives for decades.

The difference being, I didn't want these devices back. I never intended to use them again. This person obviously wanted an unbootable phone fixed, and the repair drones 'had fun with it'. Someone (Google) is going to have to pay damages, and also chase down and take down copies of those photos forever. What a mess.

I had a friend that worked at an independent film/photo processor back in the early 1970s. The walls in the process area were papered with printed nudes. Floor to ceiling. Of course, in the pre-digital era, those elicit copies never saw wide distribution, but they were there.

It's fairly simple to use, and if you sometime give your phone to other people / kids / etc ... It quickly becomes absolutely necessary.

Need to remember to use the "secure folder" camera though, if you merely take the pic THEN move to secure folder, while it's super quick and easy it's usually too late as google photos, dropbox, whatever else will already have duped it.

Pixel with the latest Android should have that ("Move to Locked Folder" [1]), though as with all security things it is annoying to use in a lot of ways. Doesn't work for SMS images or Whatsapp (Signal is much nicer on this front, but images on Signal get lost if a phone is bricked - the account backup/transfer method sucks a bit).

[1] - https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10694388?hl=en

And if it's damaged a reset or wipe may be impossible for the end user.

Unfortunately with snooping, we have little to no such protection, in which to many (in US) is a major erosion of constitutional rights.

Being able to trust your hardware/software is important, but also knowing why you can't (for now, maybe not ever) trust your hardware is also important - maybe more important.

I think you are asking the wrong question. It's more useful to ask how to initially safeguard the pictures instead of how to remove them after something broke. If the pictures were encrypted, then it doesn't matter who has possession of the phone.

They are dumb, precisely because the risk is unquantifiable to them until realized, then it's too late to act.

They don't say that when it's not encrypted it will remain secure.

Nudes are very rarely encrypted.

No lock method?

Yes, non-smokers can get lung cancer, too. But at a far lower frequency.

Unable to help me with my problem at first (we eventually figured it out), they felt they hit a dead end and said: "ok, just send us your wallet.dat, we'll fix it".

I know those guy were the real deal. I knew they would not try to steal the money I had on this wallet, because it was so little it was not even worth the time.

Yet, the fact they asked that proves how much support can badly educate their users.

Of course, I didn't send my wallet, and found another solution since I'm tech saavy. But still...

We can design devices and operating systems to be safe by default in the same way we are now designing programming languages to be safe by default. There's no reason why the data should have been recoverable from a bricked phone without the user's authentication.

We really can have our cake and eat it too - we can have devices that you can freely store nudes on without risking that some rando with a USB cord and physical access can just make off with the data, bricked device or otherwise!

Might seem weird, but if you explain to the person doing the work that you have sensitive data on the device they'd probably understand the precautions.

If you're worried about a state removing the flash chips to recover data from dead/used cells, you don't send your phone in for repair. You secure the data with a drill before disposing of it. That clearly wasn't the owner's concern. They wanted a method for securing the device, but couldn't due to the screen. This is in no way the owner's fault. I can't say I blame them wanting to have a working phone and not a very expensive paper weight.

A better method for securely erasing data from a phone before service is in everyone's best interests. The customer's data isn't at risk, the manufacturer has significantly reduced liability, and the vendor doing the work doesn't have to worry about employees doing something stupid like this and risking their contract with Google. You really just have to make the process of getting the data off the phone slightly more difficult to avoid casual theft (infringement? -- I don't know the right word here).

Laws discourage certain behaviours. It doesn't stop them.

Regarding victim blaming, obviously this person isn't to blame, but it seems that even suggestions to be cautious are seen as "victim blaming".

When you tell a kid to look to both sides when crossing the road even if it's green, you're not blaming them for a possible accident. It's just that sometimes people ignore traffic lights. And when you tell someone not to give their pin or send a device with sensitive content for repair, you're not blaming them. You're just telling them to be careful because sometimes stuff like this happens.

One, the correlation between "do a crime" and "do the time" is quite low. Look at the stats for sexual assault (0.25%), robbery (0.2%), and assault and battery (0.3%): https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

Even for murder, the US's clearance rate is only about half.

But even if the correlation were somehow perfect, it still wouldn't eliminate it. People just have a hard time believing in the consequences of actions until they experience them. I couldn't count the number of times I've gone through the "ooh fire pretty" -> " ow fire hot" loop in various ways.

So this is thing where we need defense in depth. We need solutions in criminal law and civil law and provider regulation and product design and user education and culture shifting. Each one of those will be fallible, but each one will bring the rate down. With enough work we can at least make the bad outcomes rare.

It is both. A secure design would not allow this to happen. But when it does, the perpetrator should be punished severely.

Now, I don't store nudes on my phone. That said, it was recently suggested to me, here on HN, to use a scanner app in lieu of a flatbed scanner for all my scanning needs (primarily documents around tax time). Not so sure that's a good idea versus this.

Even HN won't let you delete your personal comments.

You're not wrong, but for future reference, there is a way to stop such a reboot loop; I did it just yesterday with my wife's phone. (Of course, it was a Pixel, so it might not be on every phone.) You do it by holding power and down volume until it says "Command not found", then you hold power and volume up until you get a menu. One of the items should be "Power off". Another one is "Factory reset" or something like it.

Once my wife's phone was off, I left it off for a couple of hours to let it cool. Then I booted it again, and all was well.

We're still getting her a new phone though.

If you had highly sensitive info of a non-sexual nature on Google Drive that was going to have a massive negative impact on your life if it got leaked, half of this site would still be saying "that's awful, but you can't trust Google" if that happened.

No you would hear the exact same thing. My sensitive data on the cloud is all encrypted. Have you ever seen anyone suggesting to do backup on any cloud platform in any other way than encrypted? That's because the data is sensitive and you can't trust whoever store it for you.

> Why do we tend to treat people like they’re asking for it when their nudes get compromised?

We do that over anything that is sensitive. It's just that nowadays, people no longer consider much of their things sensitive... except nudity.

I agree entirely that we should be able to trust companies and I agree completely that the biggest issue is on them, but the thing is, we will never be able to trust them fully, there's just too much to handle. I'm not saying not to push the responsibility on them, for sure we need to do that or it's gonna be even worse, but we also need to remind people to consider their data security and how they handle it. Both are essentials if we want to lower the number of instance of theses happenings.

I'm curious, if I upload nude picture on my Google Drive and with the password "potato", and then my picture were published by someone that guessed my password. Wouldn't you suggest a stronger password? Still a victim, but still good to suggest ways to avoid it in the future.

Because nudity is akin to sex and sexual ways, which are taboo in many societies. Upstanding citizens do not have nudes, in general. Especially women or nudes hinting at same-sex romance.

It isn't right, but it is.

Edit: I'm not saying I agree with this. But it doesn't take much to see folks putting others down for nudity. YMMV depending on where you live in the US. There is a reason most politicians (in the US) wouldn't get caught with nudes and I'm guessing that in some areas of the world, it would be even more detrimental to your life. It is the same line of thinking that punishes women for being "sluts" but are OK with men having a series of one night stands.

"They deserved it for sending in an unwiped phone" is victim blaming.

"If you need to send in your phone, you can do X and Y to protect yourself" is absolutely NOT victim blaming.

I cannot wrap my mind around why people would have a problem with the second statement.

Weird also, that talking about preventative measures is only considered "victim blaming" when it comes to certain specific topics. If you say it's a good idea to wear a seat belt or helmet in your car or motorcycle, it's not victim blaming. If you say people ought to lock their doors at night, it's not victim blaming. We tell our kids not to get into strangers' cars--not victim blaming. What is it about this topic that always seems to set off the alarms?

I used to really over-share online, and reading stories like these over the years has helped a great deal to educate me about good online OpSec and privacy best practices. I have data sharing/storage habits to this very day that stem from good advice received from others.

Or more precisely, in written words. And we dont seems to have a decent solution.

As an older person, I find this observation very interesting.

Today, I would consider people in general to be much more technically knowledgeable compared to people 20+ years ago. And yet, 20 years ago, removable storage was quite common, and probably expected of most devices.

What's so tech about removing a physical piece that has data? It's an action pretty much everyone can understand intuitively - "this is where your pictures are, if you remove it they stay yours".

But (short) pin probably isn't enough, because that means the key is still on the phone.. I'd want an extra password.

BTW IDK why there are two names for the same concept

This sounds like something that can only be mandated. It doesn't make much from a business point of view.