Opinions Wanted about privacy concerns

[macleon]

Today I took my Mac Pro to an Apple store to install a wireless card, when I went back home, I turned on my computer, then I noticed that didn't request my password. I thought this was an odd behavior, then I went to the accounts settings and I noticed that they removed my password. Then I called the store to ask them about how they got access to my account and the manager told me because I gave them my password, which I never did! When I told her that I never gave my password to anybody, she said that they needed to access my account to verify that the card was working properly, but since she is not a technician she didn't know what they had done.

This bothers me and worries me a lot, not because I have anything illegal in my computer, but because I have
1Password with all my private information, ids, passwords, credit cards etc. I know that Apple is a very reputable company, however I don't know about the individuals who had worked on my computer. I feel that my personal information could have been compromised.

My basic questions are does anyone has an idea what they (the technicians) could have done when I didn't give them my password, and what your thoughts on if I should replace my passwords, ids, CC numbers etc.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts and comments.

 

[qacjared]

Since you have a mac pro just buy a hard drive install a clean copy of leopard on it then take it out. Since the DIY hard drive replacement on a mac pro is easy and apple approved Whenever you need to send your mac pro in for repairs just put that drive in a shazam! they have nothing to steal!

 

[CanadaRAM]

Well, I think you are overdoing the paranoia thing a bit here, thinking of changing your CC number and all. You do realize that by that standard you'd have to do that after every time you made a purchase at the gas station?

What they probably did, since they didn't have your password, is to start the machine with a boot DVD, and reset the main account password to 'blank', so they could test it -- which is likely why it started up with no password when you got it back. There's no indication that they know/knew your password, or your 1Password password. And although a dedicated sleuth can find and decrypt the passwords stored in the various applications, there's no reason for them to have done that.

Go ahead and change your online account passwords if you want --- it's probably time to change them up or make them stronger anyway.

But don't lose sleep over what could possibly have been done to your machine when you weren't looking. If you look at all the things that are possible, without regard to probability, you'll be up all night making lists.

Next time you send a machine in, you can create a new empty user account for testing, and give them THAT password to use, or take the blank hard drive fresh install approach as qacjared suggested.