Apple Store employee accused of sending himself photos from customer's phone

An Apple store employee was fired after a customer made the disturbing claim that he sent himself photos from her phone.

The customer, Gloria Fuentes, posted about the incident on Facebook, saying she took her phone to the Valley Plaza Mall Apple Store in Bakersfield, California for screen repair.

When she got home, she discovered a new text message sent from her phone to an unknown number. Attached to that message was "one of my EXTREMELY PERSONAL pictures that I took for my boyfriend."

She wrote that the photo was over a year old, meaning the employee had to do some deep scrolling to find it. Fuentes also said it was geotagged, revealing her home location.

"I could just imagine that I’m not the only person he’s done this to and what if he’s done this to someone’s teenage daughter or even any other woman at all!!"

Fuentes wrote that she confronted both the employee and his manager, noting the employee admitted that the text was sent to his phone number but claiming he had no idea how it happened. We've reached out to Fuentes for additional information.

In a statement emailed to Mashable, an Apple spokesperson said, “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.”

The Bakersfield Police Department confirmed to Mashable that, as reported by Fox 58 KBAK, an open investigation into the incident is underway.

Fuentes said in her Facebook post that she deleted her social media apps and apps with financial information before she visited the Apple Store. She also said she backed up her phone and planned on deleting her photos but didn't have a chance to do that final task.

This isn't a stand-alone incident, either. And the issue goes beyond just Apple stores. In October, a Park City woman reported that a Verizon employee who was helping her transfer data during an iPhone upgrade did the same thing: forwarded sensitive personal photos to himself via text messages.

Then there's the 2016 incident in which multiple Apple store employees were fired from an Australia location when it was reported they stole photos and and rated customers based on attractiveness. Apple denied that any photos were actually stolen.

A common thread from all of these incidents is that, in each, the devices were left alone with employees. As Fuentes notes, she didn't think anything of the fact the employee asked her for her passcode multiple times; it's something we've all done because we don't really have a choice.