It must be a slow news day in the UK. The main story on Sky News is an investigation they did into laptop and PC repair shops. The loosened a memory board and sent in a researcher to several shops for repair. There was activity tracking software installed and it also used the web cam to record. A number of shops faked faults and copied personal information from the laptop. The video is here and the report is here.
If you are bringing a machine to one of these places then put in a blank disk and install something on it. That’ll keep your data safe. However it won’t do anything for claims of other repairs being necessary.