Is it safe to give my MacBook to a service center with my data on it? [duplicate]

I have to give my Macbook Pro to a service center for a few days to replace the display. Is it safe from the data perspective? Can they access it? (user login is password protected, but I think the data is not encrypted) Can they just take hard drive and copy everything? What should I do to avoid it?


Often a service center need access to the Mac to verify if the problems are solved. You can do a few things.

  1. The most important thing first. Make a backup from all your data before you give your Mac to the service center.
  2. Turn on FileVault. It encrypts the harddisk.
  3. Make a second user and provide these details to the service center so they can test.

I would (and did) make two separate backups on different drives.

Then I removed all my data (no I did not go through the process of writing 0's 7 or 35 times) and sent my Imac in.

They sorted the display issue and it came back corrected.

Re-installed data and all was fine.