Woman accuses Apple worker of sending her 'personal' photo to his own phone

Gloria Elisa Fuentes was stunned by the actions of an Apple employee. Photo / Facebook

A young woman has described the sickening moment she realised an Apple staffer had sent himself one of her intimate photos after she visited a store for tech support.

Gloria Elisa Fuentes, from California in the US, recently posted about her shocking experience on a Facebook post which has since gone viral.

In it, she claimed she had visited an Apple store to have her iPhone's screen repaired.

She explained that before she visited the store, she "kind of had this feeling to delete things from my phone" – so she wiped all apps containing "any type of financial information" or which linked back to her bank account, as well as her social media apps, and did a backup before handing her device over.

However, she forgot one crucial thing – to delete her photos.

"I was going to delete all the pictures from my phone too but forgot because they were texting me that they moved my appointment time up, so I was trying to rush over there," she said.

Fuentes said the technician was "messing around with" her phone for a while and that she wasn't paying much attention, as she figured he was "just doing his job".

She said he twice asked her for her passcode, which she "didn't think anything of" at the time.

But after returning home, she made a disturbing discovery.

"I walk in my house, turn on my phone about to text someone and realise there's a message to an unsaved number," she wrote.

"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."

She said the photo was taken almost a year ago and that she had more than 5000 images stored on her device, meaning the employee would have had to scroll "for a while" to find that snap.

"I could not express how disgusted I felt and how long I cried after I saw this," she wrote.

"I went back to the store and confronted him and he admits to me that this was his number but that he 'doesn't know how that pic got sent'.

"The manager just said he'd look into it. So I'm going to be pressing legal charges against him."

She said she was sharing her story as a warning to others, particularly teens.

"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," she posted.

"I have no idea if he sent more than the picture that he forgot to delete, and I have no clue what he's going to do with them.

"This makes me cry thinking about it but I think he needs to be held accountable and anyone else that has had him work on their phone should be aware of the fact that there's a possibility that he's done this to them."

Fuentes was inundated with likes, shares and comments from concerned citizens.

"What a f***ing pervert. Never trust anyone," one Facebook user wrote, while another posted: "I'm so sorry some lonely loser had to invade your privacy".

"What that employee did is absolutely disgusting," another added.

In a statement sent to The Washington Post, Apple said the company was "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," the statement reads.

"He is no longer associated with our company."