GOOGLE says it’s investigating claims that Pixel phones are being hacked at a Google-associated repair facility after at least two allegations were made.
One report was announced on Reddit anonymously the first week of December after the Google customer, who chronicled their alleged experience in a detailed post, shared their story to the r/LegalAdvice forum.
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The Pixel owner claimed that they sent their phone in after it would not turn on, only to find that money, albeit a small sum, was stolen from their PayPal account.
The post’s author also alleged that their private images were accessed and shared on social media accounts linked to the hacked phone.
The anonymous user claimed that they tracked their phone to the Google-affiliated repair facility in Texas using the Find My Device tool upon noticing the unauthorized logins.
They further shared that they filed a police report after contacting Google.
The second allegation came from game designer and New York Times bestselling author Jane McGonigal, who publicly tweeted about the experience.
In McGonigal’s case, she claims that after she mailed in her Pixel 5a phone to a Google-associated facility for repairs, someone logged into her Gmail account, Google Drive and Dropbox, hoping to obtain sensitive information and photos
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McGonigal tweeted: “The photos they opened were of me in bathing suits, sports bras, form-fitting dresses, and of stitches after surgery.”
She also tweeted that she did not see any of the security notifications sent to her email because the hacker had flagged the messages as spam.
McGonigal alleged that she could not erase her phone’s contents before sending it in because of the damage the device had sustained.
While it’s unconfirmed whether the phone was hacked at the facility or during transport, FedEx tracking information showed it did in fact arrive at the facility, according to McGonigal.
Alex Moriconi, a spokesperson for Google, told The Verge in a statement that they are currently “investigating” the claims.
Presently, Google’s official repair instructions suggest backing up your phone and then rebooting to factory settings before sending it in for repairs.
However, depending on the damage, that is not always possible, as the aforementioned reports show.
The US Sun reached out to Google for comment but has not yet received a response.
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