Privacy concerns? It can be a worry. You’ve broken your phone screen and need to leave your phone for repairs with a repair centre. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, you think, until the repair centre representative asks you to unlock the phone and provide the passcode to unlock the device. Alarm bells ring as you realise you’re giving a complete stranger access to all your personal information.

It’s completely understandable this scenario can cause major concern. After all, virtually every aspect of our personal lives is stored on our phones. Contacts, banking, credit card details, social media, photos, personal files, health details, your browser history; even your cryptocurrency wallet. It’s all stored on your phone, and in the wrong hands could wreak havoc throughout your everyday life.

Technically, it could happen. A nefarious snooping technician could, in theory, steal your data. But the realities are somewhat different.

Overall, repair centres and repair technicians adhere to an established set of professional ethics. A reputable repair service understands the importance of customer privacy and will have a privacy policy in place. Trained technicians are typically bound by confidentiality agreements and are submitted to police checks prior to employment. It’s an extremely rare occurrence whereby repair staff would take time out of their busy schedule to transfer a device’s data. The electronics repair industry is serious about effective privacy protocols.

Then there’s the legal implications. Imagine the legal costs and reputational risks a repair centre would endure should it be found responsible for data theft. It’s a highly unattractive scenario for any business that deals with clients’ data.

Plus, logistically, repairers have a limited time with your device. They’re focussed on completing a repair in an efficient timeframe. Or they’re resolving issues associated with more complex repair processes. The majority of this time the device is either disconnected from power or experiencing regular reboots to aid testing and troubleshooting. It’s impossible to extract data from a mobile device during these procedures.

How Do I Protect My Data?

To mitigate the rare possibility of your personal data being compromised, there are a number of steps you can take.

  1. Firstly, do some research into possible repair centre candidates. Choose a reputable repairer. You’ll soon learn which repair centres gain the most favourable reputations via positive customer reviews on review services such as Google Reviews, Trust Pilot, and Product Reviews.
  2. Once you’ve found a repair shop that clearly prioritises customers’ privacy, backup your data. You can do this to either a cloud service such as Apple iCloud or Google Drive, or back up an external device such as a personal computer. To be super-safe why not do both. Once you’ve saved your data to an external computer and/or a cloud service, you could delete any sensitive personal information from your phone. Remove photos, confidential files, delete stored sensitive passwords, and log out of any critical accounts. With iPhones you could even go as far as wiping the device completely and handing it to the repairer in a factory settings state. In which case there’d simply be no data to access. This is Apple’s recommendation prior to a repair.
  3. Next, make sure your device is locked with a strong passcode, and add another layer of protection with biometric authentication such as fingerprint or face recognition. Even if a technician wanted to get at your personal information, they wouldn’t have the inexorable amount of time it takes to even attempt cracking your passcode. And besides, they’re busy repairing your device.
  4. Finally, voice your concerns to the repair centre or repairer. Literally ask; “How do I know my personal data won’t be accessed.” Communicating your questions openly will clarify your concerns and help establish some trust.
  5. Another option would be to not provide your passcode at all. Once the repair is complete you can open the device and check everything in the presence of the technician or repair centre staff.

Inevitably there will be times during certain repair processes where the technician will require a passcode. For example, if your device is being assessed for water damage the device may need to be rebooted several times whilst various conclusions are drawn as to the device’s operational behaviour. Equally, and perhaps most obviously, if you’ve submitted a device for data recovery. In these cases you have to trust the technicians.

Maintenance Mode

For Samsung Galaxy and some Huawei users there’s an even easier option – Maintenance mode.

Maintenance mode effectively sets up a seperate user account on the Samsung Galaxy device, with access to only the preinstalled applications. Any images, photos, messages, email accounts, banking accounts and personal details simply cannot be accessed. Apps can be downloaded in Maintenance mode, should the repair centre require for additional testing, but once Maintenance mode is exited those apps will deactivate. In other words, it’s a perfect repair mode.

To disable Maintenance mode you need to input your passcode into the device.

Maintenance mode is an excellent solution when submitting your device for a repair as privacy violations  are next to impossible without your passcode. The mode is available on Galaxy devices running Android 13 or higher, and Huawei mobile phones with EMUI 8.0 or above.

Hopefully more device manufacturers catch on to the idea of a dedicated repair mode.

Why fix2U Requests Passcodes

At fix2U we request passcodes for a few reasons.

Firstly, it’s important to test a device for repair both before and following a repair to make certain all aspects of the device function correctly.

This may uncover faults in the device the user was unaware of prior to repair, and post repair, confirms all aspects of the device are functioning normally, ensuring the repair has been successful.

This is imperative for the customer’s peace of mind, and establishing the existence of any faults that may or may not become a warranty issue.

Once both parties are clearly aware of any existing faults the repair can proceed.

fix2U’s 12-point testing regime includes:

  1. Digitiser/screen touch sensitivity.
  2. Home button response for Touch ID if present, or Face ID.
  3. Autofocus for both front and rear cameras, along with flash functionality.
  4. Proximity sensor.
  5. Microphone.
  6. Earpiece speaker.
  7. Loudspeaker.
  8. Volume up and down buttons.
  9. Charge port and wireless charging.
  10. Audio jack if present.
  11. Wi-Fi and mobile data functionality.
  12. Battery health and performance.

Overall, there are a number of ways to mitigate the possibility of your data being accessed during a phone repair, with some models and brands making this easier than others. Phone repair data security and privacy is a concern. However, when the logistics come into play the chance of a data breach during the repair process is extremely unlikely when dealing with reputable repair shops.