Pixel mail-in repair service in the U.S. reportedly compromised accounts, photos
It looks like Pixel’s mail-in service might be a bit sketchy in the U.S.
The Verge‘s Jane McGonigal says her internet accounts were compromised after she mailed in her Pixel 5a to Google for service. McGonigal says the intruders accessed her Google services, Dropbox and another email account, while activity logs indicated that they accessed photos in an attempt to “find nudes.”
“The photos they opened were of me in bathing suits, sports bras, form-fitting dresses, and of stitches after surgery,” McGonigal writes. “They deleted Google security notifications in my backup email accounts.”
Yeah, don't send your Google phone in for warranty repair/replacement. As has happened with others, last night someone used it to log into my gmail, Drive, photos backup email account, dropbox, and I can see from activity logs they opened a bunch of selfies hoping to find nudes
— Jane McGonigal (@avantgame) December 4, 2021
McGonigal sent her broken phone to a Pixel repair centre in Texas in June, and Google later told her that it never received the phone. Following that, she was charged for a replacement device. However, McGonigal said that FedEx tracking details indicated that the phone had arrived at the facility. Afterwards, the “missing” phone was used for two-factor authentication checks to access her accounts.
McGonigal says this has happened to others as well. McGonigal offers the full story on her Twitter page.
In a statement to The Verge, a Google spokesperson said, “we are investigating this claim.” At this moment, it’s unclear who exactly has the phone or whether it was intercepted during transit or in the repair facility.
In the U.S., Google offers mail-in repair services in and out of warranty. If you don’t want to mail in your device, you can head to a uBreakiFix instead. Canada works a little differently; Google Support pages state that mail-in services here are handled exclusively by uBreakiFix.
Either way, whether you’re mailing it in or bringing your device to a repair service yourself, you always have to be careful of something like this happening.