Recently I had the screen replaced on my child’s iPad. The tech asked for passcode, and I refused to provide it. The tech complained and said when I came to pick it up he’d need to guide me through some things.

Indeed, there were some settings that needed to be set, to ”help” the new screen.

Having said that — I’ve previously documented a case (well over 10 years ago) where I caught a local PC repair company who used their access to a machine of mine they were repairing - to quickly scan through the thumbnails of our personal photos, and look closer at any image which showed any flesh.

People expect to be trusted but don’t act in a trustworthy manner.

I used to repair iPhone screens and can answer this. It was the easiest way to check the device worked after the repair and that the screen didn’t have any dead spots. We told people to wipe the phones before they brought them in, and gave people the option of either giving us the PIN code or accepting the device back without us validating the fix.

I don’t think I ever had a single person say no to the pin but we did have plenty of people wipe the device before they brought it in.

When I sent my Steam Deck for repair, Steam asked my to factory reset it, which I did.

Now I think this is what I would do if I need to send any electronic device for repairs.

All my data is backed up to cloud, yes setting it up again is a chore but it's better than risking my data with some unknown contractor.

> All my data is backed up to cloud

How is that less worrisome? Your data is living in someone else's storage, waiting to be compromised.

Depending on the backup mechanism they use it might be protected with cryptography and a private key or strong password.

Assuming they did all that properly of course....

My phone is not backed up. There's also nothing on it that I could not stand to lose.

There are also stories of people losing all of their stuff by sending the device in. So the added benefit of suggesting a wipe is that it encourages you to assume total loss and plan ahead.

That doesn’t necessarily help with people sending in devices with special nostalgia for the physical hardware, such as a signature. Though whether those sorts of issues were from not paying attention to notes attached to the account or outright theft has rarely been clear.

Maybe the benefit of only ever dealing with extremely sketchy places for phone stuff is that they already know I won't give them information to unlock my phone so they never ask. Either the repair can be effected without, or I don't want it done. "Is it OK to wipe this phone?" is also an acceptable question, and sometimes the answer might even be "Yes".

Could be standard protocol for all repairs, meaning they don’t discriminate between repair otherwise their staff will get overwhelmed

In my experience you just say no and they go “OK” and do the job just fine.