The word coming from several sources (including the Taipei Times) is that the Maxtor Basics 3200 external hard drive – manufactured in China – comes out of the box brand new with a Trojan horse already on it. The program quietly steals passwords and sends them to a server “somewhere in China.”

If you’re like me you’re saying “WHAT?” Unbelievably, it’s true. Seagate Technology, the company that makes the hard drives, claims the program collects only passwords for computer games. However, the Investigations Bureau from the Taipei Ministry of Justice suspects the program was designed to collect more than passwords—that it was designed to collect and send every piece of data put on the computer.

But wait, there’s more!

The program was also designed to disable any spyware / anti-virus software.

Naturally, representatives from Seagate say they have no reason to believe that Chinese authorities were involved in this little endeavor, and that the virus was only designed to steal and upload gaming passwords. (*** writer clears throat ***)

“Only” 1800 of these things were shipped with the virus.  If you’re one of the lucky 1800, you can call Seagate’s customer service number and they’ll be happy to help you out. (Sidebar question — do you think they record their conversations “for training purposes?”)  

Apparently, when it comes to buying anything, our trust levels should be getting lower and lower.*  So with this incident, it might be time to rethink the meaning of the word “new.” Perhaps a new protocol will have to be wiping a new hard drive clean at least three times before putting anything on it. 

That probably ought to apply to flash/thumb drives, iPods, you name it. Anything that comes in contact with your data.

The Question: What problems have you had when buying a product that others ought to know about?  Fill us in.

 * * *

* I have a little story of my own about a “no questions asked 100% guarantee return policy” that accompanied a rather expensive bed I recently purchased – and returned, while getting screwed in the return process.

But we’ll save that story for another time. . . .

Share This

Filed in Technology, Work, Sales, Selling, Customer Service, Workplace