A technician on a service call at a home is arrested after a woman is taped while in the shower.
By Ashley Surdin, Times Staff Writer
A woman and her mother sued Best Buy and its "Geek Squad" computer repair team Wednesday, claiming they were legally responsible for dispatching a technician who allegedly videotaped the daughter taking a shower.The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of Sarah Vasquez, 22, and her mother, Natalie Fornaciari, 46, both from city of Industry, alleges that Geek Squad technician Hao Kuo Chi, 26, placed his cellphone in Vasquez's bathroom during a computer service call March 4 and recorded her showering.
Chi was arrested the same day on suspicion of using a camera to view a person without their consent and of annoying or molesting a child under 18, both misdemeanors, said Sheriff's Sgt. Bob Skudlarski.The family said that they relied on the national chain to screen and train agents before sending them into people's homes.They also relied on the Geek Squad's brochure, which promised to provide "agents you can trust.""Businesses need to do a better job of screening the employees whom they send to their customers' homes," said attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing the family.A Best Buy spokeswoman said she learned of the lawsuit shortly after it was filed Wednesday."Best Buy was not informed of this action prior to being contacted by the media today," the company said in a statement. "Obviously, we intend to cooperate fully with any investigation into this matter."According to the suit, Chi came to the family's home last month for a scheduled computer service appointment. After starting to work, he asked to use the bathroom and was shown to one shared by Vasquez and her 13-year-old sister, Kelly Rocha, the lawsuit said.Vasquez later showered in the same bathroom. When she stepped out of the stall, she noticed a cellphone propped up on her cluttered sink, the suit said. The phone was covered in a leather case; a small camera with a red, blinking light was sticking out, she said.Suspicious, Vasquez left the bathroom to tell her sister Kelly and when she returned, the phone was gone. Kelly then found the phone in her bedroom. Believing the phone was programmed to record her as well, she removed its memory chip and she and Vasquez took it to a Verizon store to see what was on it."You could see him on the video setting it up," Vasquez said. "I was shocked."The sisters called their stepfather, who reported Chi to police, and he was arrested at their house.The family is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for alleged fraud, negligent misrepresentation and hiring, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of warrant.
Written by: By Ashley Surdin, Times Staff Writer
Monday, May 14, 2007
YAHOO GOES UNLIMITED EMAIL STORAGE
SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May.
The world's biggest e-mail service said Tuesday that it would scrap its free e-mail storage limit of one gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail.
Microsoft has a two gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes.
"We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails," David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo, said in a telephone interview. "You can keep stuff forever."
Officials said the decision to remove e-mail storage limits reflects the plunging cost of storage as new personal computers store up to a trillion bytes of data and owners of 80-gigabyte iPods can carry 100 hours of video in their pockets.
By contrast, when Yahoo first introduced its e-mail service a little under a decade ago, it capped individual storage at four megabytes per user. At that time, an "ultra high-density" floppy disk for personal computers then held 144 megabytes.
"People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives," said Filo, who remains active in managing technical operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific title of Chief Yahoo.
Once it begins in May, the transition to unlimited storage should take a month, said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
"We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that our users are far under one gig, on average," Kremer said. "What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers send more photos."
One caveat Yahoo makes is that the offer is for personal use and subject to guidelines against abuse that apply to Yahoo Mail. No one can build a business giving away unlimited storage to other consumers using Yahoo Mail, executives said.
Two countries - China and Japan - are excluded. "We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans," Kremer said in a statement. Yahoo is a minority owner with partner Softbank in Yahoo Japan and a part owner with Alibaba of the Yahoo business in China.
Filo said Yahoo was looking at lifting caps on storage for other services such as its Flickr photo-sharing service. "We are looking at those on a case-by-case basis," he said.
It's a far cry from when giving away two megabytes of data was considered a big deal, said David Nakayama, Yahoo's group vice president of engineering and developer of RocketMail, which Yahoo acquired and relaunched as Yahoo Mail in 1997.
In a posting to Yahoo's corporate blog, he said that capacity when Yahoo Mail started was 200 gigabytes for all customers.
"I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a two megabyte quota wasn't enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to four megabyte per account!" he wrote.
The world's biggest e-mail service said Tuesday that it would scrap its free e-mail storage limit of one gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail.
Microsoft has a two gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes.
"We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails," David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo, said in a telephone interview. "You can keep stuff forever."
Officials said the decision to remove e-mail storage limits reflects the plunging cost of storage as new personal computers store up to a trillion bytes of data and owners of 80-gigabyte iPods can carry 100 hours of video in their pockets.
By contrast, when Yahoo first introduced its e-mail service a little under a decade ago, it capped individual storage at four megabytes per user. At that time, an "ultra high-density" floppy disk for personal computers then held 144 megabytes.
"People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives," said Filo, who remains active in managing technical operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific title of Chief Yahoo.
Once it begins in May, the transition to unlimited storage should take a month, said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
"We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that our users are far under one gig, on average," Kremer said. "What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers send more photos."
One caveat Yahoo makes is that the offer is for personal use and subject to guidelines against abuse that apply to Yahoo Mail. No one can build a business giving away unlimited storage to other consumers using Yahoo Mail, executives said.
Two countries - China and Japan - are excluded. "We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans," Kremer said in a statement. Yahoo is a minority owner with partner Softbank in Yahoo Japan and a part owner with Alibaba of the Yahoo business in China.
Filo said Yahoo was looking at lifting caps on storage for other services such as its Flickr photo-sharing service. "We are looking at those on a case-by-case basis," he said.
It's a far cry from when giving away two megabytes of data was considered a big deal, said David Nakayama, Yahoo's group vice president of engineering and developer of RocketMail, which Yahoo acquired and relaunched as Yahoo Mail in 1997.
In a posting to Yahoo's corporate blog, he said that capacity when Yahoo Mail started was 200 gigabytes for all customers.
"I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a two megabyte quota wasn't enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to four megabyte per account!" he wrote.
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