The website set up a computer and then took it to a number of Best Buy stores. While most techie did an admirable job of installing iTunes on the PC, sometimes for free, sometimes while the people involved in the sting operation waited by the counter, it found that one Geek Squad agent decided, when he found a folder on the desktop stacked full of pictures from left-handed websites, that he might like a piece of the action. The Consumerist had rigged up the computer to video the screen while the agent allegedly downloaded the exotic pictures. (The video is here).

Geek Squad chief executive Robert Stephens told the Consumerist that he wanted to launch an internal investigation and said, "If this is true, it's an isolated incident and grounds for termination of the Agent involved." To be fair the Consumerist only caught one in the act, while the others did their job resisting the temptation of dirty pictures.

The website advised people to make sure that important files (and we guess they mean those really important arthouse ones with nipple torture and a hippopotamus) are encrypted and password protected and stored on an external hard drive. You know it makes sense.

The website has now posted details of how to catch PC support guys with your own surveillance rig. It reckons the problem is not limited to Geek Squad, a lot of techies in a lot of other companies like to snaffle dodgy pics and other files too.

"Our hope is that anyone concerned about their security would be able to do this sort of operation," Consumerist editor Popken told CRN. He said that this ought to create some awareness in the techie community, "where they'll have second thoughts about stealing people's files, because they just might get caught."

Of course we here would never, ever dream of rifling through a friend's PC looking for interesting files to, err, make a back up of - just in case you know!