Meet Sophia Ellison, a Best Buy customer who lost her racy photos and was taken advantage of by a member of their Geek Squad. Get all the horrifying details here.
This story just goes to show you – do not, under any circumstances, take racy photos or video of yourself if you don’t want others to see it. Even if you are not a celebrity, you are at risk. Unless you are prepared t remove all of your racy and personal data yourself, you do not belong having it on your phone. It doesn’t matter that it is personal and should be confidential, there are vultures out there that have no respect. And Sophia Ellison learned that the hard way.
When Sophia went to Best Buy to get her cracked Iphone screen repaired, she was told she qualified for an upgrade. The employee, named George, offered to buy her phone for $60, for his personal use. This is where my red flags would have gone up and I would have wanted to get my memory card and all data transferred first. But I guess Sophia was more trusting and asked if her would just transfer her data to her new phone and then wipe the old one clean.
Once she got home and began going through it, she realized that none of her 900 plus photos and video had made it. She said there were suggestive personal photos and a video taken by her young children of themselves, joking after getting out of the shower.
She immediately called the Best Buy and asked a manager t return her call. Instead George called her and and told her to calm down. He promised he would get her personal data to her. He called back a few days later and what happened was even more creepy and shocking,
“A few days later, he called back to tell me he’d made a CD at his house with all my photos, and when can I come get them. I could pick them up at his house.”
Ellison hung up the phone, felling ill. She contacted the police and attorney and is considering a civil suit.
“Every day I have to think about, ‘Hmm, I wonder where my face, where my body, where my children, where my memories are in this technology world,’ and I can only imagine.”
Responding to her allegations, Best Buy provided WTOP with the following statement:
“First and foremost, we apologize to this customer for an unfortunate experience caused by what appears to be rogue action against our code of conduct, specifically related to our trade-in program. We hope to restore her trust. We can confirm that an employee at this store has been terminated for making a personal transaction with a customer while on duty at the store. We’re continuing our investigation and assure you that we will continue to act promptly to address any inappropriate employee behavior.”
This would do nothing for me, as the photos and videos are still missing. I hope that this creepizoid gets prosecuted and Sophia Ellison at least gets her memories back.
