Apple Employee Sent Himself Very Personal Pic from Customer's Phone

When we take our phones in for servicing, we trust that our private data will be kept safe. Unfortunately, that is not always the case as one customer discovered the hard way.

A screen repair gone wrong

Gloria Fuentes posted a message on Facebook outlining how she took her phone to the Valley Plaza Mall Apple Store in Bakersfield, California for a screen repair. In preparation for the servicing, Fuentes said she had deleted her financial information and backed up her phone but did not get a chance to delete her photos.

RELATED: DISTRACTED EMPLOYEES AT APPLE’S NEW CAMPUS HAVE BEEN WALKING INTO THE GLASS PANES

When she returned home, she found a text message sent from her phone to an unknown number with a very private photo she had taken for her boyfriend. Even scarier was the fact that the picture was geotagged with her home location.

"I walk in my house turn on my phone about to text someone and realize there’s a message to an unsaved number!!!!! I open it and instantly wanted to cry!!! This guy went through my gallery and sent himself one of my EXTREMELY PERSONAL pictures that I took for my boyfriend and it had my geolocation on so he also knows where I live!!!" wrote Fuentes in her post.

Fuentes also revealed she then confronted the employee and spoke to his manager. Although the employee confessed the number the picture was sent to was his, he claimed he had no idea how it happened.

Almost a year old

Fuentes further added that the picture was almost a year old meaning the employee must have looked through a vast amount of her content. "AND THIS PICTURE WAS FROM ALMOST A YEAR AGO SO HE HAD TO HAVE SCROLLED UP FOR A WHILE TO GET TO THAT PICTURE being that I have over 5,000 pics in my phone!!!! I could not express how disgusted I felt and how long I cried after I saw this!!" she said.

Since the incident went viral the employee has been fired. Apple even released a statement to Mashable confirming the employee's termination: “We are grateful to the customer for bringing this deeply concerning situation to our attention. Apple immediately launched an internal investigation and determined that the employee acted far outside the strict privacy guidelines to which we hold all Apple employees. He is no longer associated with our company.”

In the meantime, Eyewitness News reported that there is also an investigation underway with the Bakersfield Police Department.