Is it safe to get my laptop repaired?
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A couple of weeks ago I bought a new laptop. Needless to say the first thing I did was fill the hard drive with porn. LOL
Bad news is, it's blown up. Tried turning it on the other day and nothing happened. Needs to get sent back to ACER for repair. Now the question is, if I send it back am I likely to end up in a world of shit for having all this downloaded porn on it? No, there's nothing like underage kids or rape or goat-fucking on there, but it's all come from torrent sites such as this one.
What should I do? Send it back and hope for the best, or write of the £400 I spent on the laptop?
Help, guys!
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I'm not sure anyone can make that decision for you, frostycab.
I would be wary of taking any computer for repair that held anything other than an empty hard drive. With a laptop that is difficult. And you can't even access the drive to wipe it.
I don't suppose you have a porn-friendly computer guru handy
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Sadly not.
I'm not at all worried about the fact that there's porn on there. What guy doesn't have porn (or at least porn bookmarks) on their computer. I'm, just worried about the fact that its come from torrent sites.
I'm in the UK if that makes a difference to what you'd advise.
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I'm in the UK and I have only taken a PC in for repair once and I changed the hard drive before I took it in.
I cannot see the likes of PCWorld reporting you for downloading torrents. They keep an eye out for illegal images/movies.
Actually half the people at somewhere like PC World (nemesis of Gary Glitter) probably wouldn't know it came from a torrent site anyway.
But ultimately I couldn't give you firm advice on what to do. But if it comes to the worst I could visit you with a file (no, not that sort of file) in a cake
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How would the repair person know where the porn came from? And for that matter, why would he care? "I'm suspecting this person has downloaded SeanCody porn illegally, Mr. Officer. Book him!" Doesn't seem very likely that would happen. Wouldn't that happen to practically every single male turning in a broken laptop if that's the case? And if so wouldn't we know it by know?
If you're not embarrased by the porn in question then I don't see why not.
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As someone who has done repair work, I can speculate..
Most likely they will just trash the drive and replace it, if the drive is the problem. Or they might simply wipe it and factory reset all the drivers and such. If it's the motherboard or any other component they won't touch the drive at all.
However.. It is possible that they might scan the drive intentionally for errors or unintentionally just by testing the system. They may even send the drive back to the manufacturer who in turn might do this as well.
BUT
They have no interest in reporting anything unless it's really serious (such as kiddie or terrorist stuff). At most they would giggle at the amount of porn lol. They don't work for copyright agencies and have nothing to gain from contacting them. It's possible they even have a privacy clause that forbids them from doing so anyways. Either way, as someone else said, they can't tell where it came from anyhows, so they cannot prove that it's not legally purchased content, nor can they prove it has been shared to anyone else.EDIT: If you happen to have an external hdd docking station like I do ("Icy Box") you can easily remove the hdd and copy/wipe the files on it, assuming the drive isn't damaged AND assumnig the warranty isn't voided by doing so. Read the warranty card to be sure.
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Good answers, guys. Thanks. I think I'll just send it in and take my chances.
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Yeah, good answer from the former techie. If they reported every laptop for having porn that might be downloaded illegally I think that would drive A LOT of business away, hehe.
