Best Buy in-store TVs show porn to customers
by Steven Mostyn - Feb 24 2012, 11:21
Image: Best Buy.
Bad news for Best Buy this week after one of its retail outlets in Greenville hit the headlines for broadcasting pornographic imagery on several of its display model televisions. Doh.
And, to make matters worse, the impromptu sex show left shocked customer Gloria Berg feeling “extremely violated” by what she saw while viewing a bank of 55-inch smart televisions.
“It was an extremely, extremely pornographic image,” she said in a CBS Channel 7 report. “I think the word ‘pornographic’ doesn’t cover it.”
According to Berg, the image remained on public display for a number of minutes and was viewed by many other customers before it was seen and removed by the store manager.
In explaining the root cause of the problem, Best Buy said the store’s Wi-Fi connection had been hijacked and that, more worryingly, such adult imagery had popped up on the store’s smart TVs beforehand.
“Two individuals accessed our store’s wireless signal to broadcast inappropriate content on a smart television display,” it explained in an official statement. “In both cases, we worked immediately to disable the inappropriate content.”
“We greatly apologize for this unfortunate incident and we are working to ensure that it does not happen again,” it added.
Not content with the apology, Berg has reported the incident to South Carolina police officials, which have said they need to recover the images in question from Best Buy in order to assess whether they equate to dissemination of pornographic material.
It remains to be seen if the Greenville store manager saved the on-screen images or merely deleted them.
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