Drowned MBP 2015 Touchbar

[sanch3z_77]

Sadly I drowned my trusty 2015 15" MBP touchbar on holiday in the summer. I put it into a local shop for repair, who performmed a water treatment process, afterwhich they tried to repair certain items that they said were registerring as shorted. After about four weeks they called me to say they had no success and that I could pick the machine back up.

Now i'm not sure what to do with it. The shop said the screen, keyboard and lots of the internal elements are in perfect working order so they offered me £250 for the faulty machine. They did say I would likely get more flipping it on ebay, but as it contains private information on the HD i'm a little nervous selling it without wiping it first. The shop said as the logic board is fried, and the drive is linked to that, it would be impossible for anyone to retrieve the data.

What are people's thoughts on the above? Would people feel happy selling a faulty machine to a random person online without being able to wipe it first? Or are there steps to take the mitigate the issues?

I've had to take a massive financial hit replacing this machine so anything back would be massively apprecaited.

TIA.

 

[KaliYoni]

What are people's thoughts on the above?

If I was facing a similar situation, my actions would be based on what information was stored on the drive and whether the drive was encrypted.

• If any confidential or sensitive business data is on the storage device, I would ask the repair shop to remove the HD. I wouldn't feel concerned about damage caused by the removal because the computer is dead anyway. I would then physically destroy the HD myself.
• If the drive is unencrypted and there is sensitive or confidential personal data on the drive, I would do what I just described above.
• If the drive is encrypted and there isn't any sensitive or confidential data on it, I might feel comfortable selling the entire computer for parts. But from a risk management perspective and an able-to-sleep-at-night perspective, I probably would end up either simply holding onto the machine or having the drive removed and sticking the drive into a drawer for a few years.

For anybody interested, this is a good guide to erasing and destroying HDs and SSDs:

How to Securely Erase a Mac’s SSD or Hard Drive - TidBITS

If you need to get rid of a Mac or external drive, how do you ensure that no one can access the data on it? Adam Engst runs through the various methods you can employ, one or more of which should address your situation.

tidbits.com

 

[curnalpanic]

Were you using Filevault with a good password?

Also, 2015's did not have Touch bar so it must be 2016 or later.

 

[sanch3z_77]

Were you using Filevault with a good password?

Also, 2015's did not have Touch bar so it must be 2016 or later.

hi,

You're right, sorry it's a 2016/2017 (A1707). With regards to password, I was using a standard one used at the point of loggin into my user account, which was the admin one as it was only ever me using the machine.

 

[sanch3z_77]

If I was facing a similar situation, my actions would be based on what information was stored on the drive and whether the drive was encrypted.

• If any confidential or sensitive business data is on the storage device, I would ask the repair shop to remove the HD. I wouldn't feel concerned about damage caused by the removal because the computer is dead anyway. I would then physically destroy the HD myself.
• If the drive is unencrypted and there is sensitive or confidential personal data on the drive, I would do what I just described above.
• If the drive is encrypted and there isn't any sensitive or confidential data on it, I might feel comfortable selling the entire computer for parts. But from a risk management perspective and an able-to-sleep-at-night perspective, I probably would end up either simply holding onto the machine or having the drive removed and sticking the drive into a drawer for a few years.

For anybody interested, this is a good guide to erasing and destroying HDs and SSDs:

How to Securely Erase a Mac’s SSD or Hard Drive - TidBITS

If you need to get rid of a Mac or external drive, how do you ensure that no one can access the data on it? Adam Engst runs through the various methods you can employ, one or more of which should address your situation.

tidbits.com

thanks and all very sensible suggestions. The shop told me the drive on this machine is hardcoded/wired to the logic board, so if it's fried, nobody would be able to access the information. Like you said, this still feels a risk and not worth the hassle. They did say they could remove a chip from one of the boards as without it the drive is useless, again sounds weird.

Maybe I need to ask them to unsolder the drive from the logic board and provide it back. Then I can destroy it, although I would feel happier taking steps myself. It would be good to be able to recoup some money of this...

 

[okkibs]

Okay let's clear this up: If you have never enabled Filevault yourself, then if anyone fixes the Mac and is able to start it up again, they can boot recovery and reset the password. They would then gain access to all files you stored, except for your keychain that is used to store some passwords (like the Wifi password and a few others). This would be perfectly doable, although time and thus labor intensive.

If you at any point in time have enabled Filevault in the security settings, then your files are not recoverable without entering a password, even if the Mac was able to boot up again.

The shop told me the drive on this machine is hardcoded/wired to the logic board, so if it's fried, nobody would be able to access the information.

That is true on 2018 and older Macbooks that have the T2 chip.

They did say they could remove a chip from one of the boards as without it the drive is useless, again sounds weird.

This isn't weird and again would be true if your Mac was a 2018 or older model, the chip the repair shop is talking about is the T2 chip. Without it the data is unrecoverable. But that is not the case for the 2016 and 2017 models, they don't have a T2 chip.

Your Mac would have a T1 chip, but it only drives the TouchID feature on the keyboard.

Maybe I need to ask them to unsolder the drive from the logic board and provide it back. Then I can destroy it, although I would feel happier taking steps myself. It would be good to be able to recoup some money of this...

The safest way would be to ask them to return the entire logic board to you and keep the rest of the machine for those 250 bucks or whatever. Then smash that to pieces. They can still use the display. But I don't know if it makes sense for them to buy that, I really doubt it and I am surprised they are willing to give you any money for it. The only part that is of value is the display if it's unscratched.

It is likely the repair shop would just take the display and throw out the rest, so personally I'd give them the entire thing and take the money. I highly doubt anyone would buy this with water damage for more than 100 bucks.

But to be very clear here, if you have data left on this Mac that is of such nature that it cannot come to light under any circumstance, for example if you are a business and the Mac contains sensitive customer information that would put you at risk breaking laws if that ended up in the hands of third parties, then you should destroy the logic board as the risk outweighs by far any monetary gains. 250 bucks vs. data privacy fines up to hundreds of thousands.