I had to take my phone into the O2 shop yesterday as it had developed a fault. We had tracked it down to a hardware problem, so off it has to go for repair under the warranty. No big deal as I have a spare handset to tide me over and I should get it back by Friday.
However, when handing it over, I was asked if I had all my information backed up. Well, silly question, of course I have. The reason being that they will be wiping all of the data before fixing the problem. Why is this? Data protection. Yup, that little bit of legislation that is designed to control how businesses use our personal information, not so that they can wet their pants every time someone brings in a faulty phone and have to wipe the data just in case.
It seems that yet again, the original intent behind the legislation has become lost and it is used as a general excuse for not thinking – much like health and safety legislation. After all, this is my data on my machine. They are not processing that data, therefore, wiping it is entirely unnecessary.
Welcome to the world of the 21st century where we no longer think for ourselves.
Yeh, it’s more to do with covering their arses so that their technicians don’t spy on your data and then blab about what they might find than it is to do about data protection. For the same reason H&S is used as an excuse for many decisions, many of them having nothing to do with H&S. It’s just that rather than explain the actual reason for every single decision companies go for a few reasons to cover everything. H&S or DP. It’s called being lazy. But it also leads to overuse of the excuses.
I’ll bet that Gary Glitter wishes this rule had been in place at PC World….
Ouch!
Err HOW does one back up data on a phone, anyway?
Or is this very recent, touchy-feely all-singing-dancing-touchscreen job, with millions of “apps”?
All of my relevant information is backed up using Google servers, so I can simply download it back. Previously, I used Outlook for the same purpose.
Yes, it’s an Android smartphone. Useful as my eyes aren’t getting any younger.
The number of interventions which have been put in place to make life more difficult – makes one wonder at times. Surely it’s your biz if the data stays on or not, i.e. it’s your risk.
You would have thought so.
Probably more to the point, due to the repair process they may not be able to guarantee to give you the same phone back – or not the same phone internals – and after security issues in the past habitually ‘wipe’ the data just in case the data ends up in someone else’s hands!
And that would have been a perfectly reasonable explanation, rather than palm me off with “data protection”.