A woman who caught a mobile phone repair shop worker scrolling through hundreds of her very personal photos says she feels completely violated.
Louise Johnson, 28, took her iPhone 11 to be fixed after dropping her handset on the floor last week.
Needing her screen and battery replaced, she agreed to pay £85 for the phone to be repaired at The Mobile Doctor in Worcester on Saturday.
But when she collected it, she caught a male worker leering at intimate selfies of her in underwear and bikinis which she had taken for her boyfriend.
Louise said she grabbed the phone but claims the man snatched it back, scratching her hand in the process.
The man has since been fired as the shop apologised and promised a repeat would never happen again.
She said: "As soon as I walked in, I saw him lock my phone and put it to the side, but I saw my wallpaper so I knew it was mine.
"I asked whether my phone was ready, and he told me it would be another hour as someone had to come and finish repairing the frame.
"But I knew he'd been on my phone, so I asked for it back, swiped up to see my most recent tabs and saw that he was looking through all my photographs from years ago. Some of them were personal to me.
"There were pictures of me in bikinis and in underwear which were quite intimate. They were pictures I had sent to a boyfriend and no one else. I could see that he'd been looking at them.
"I felt disgusted and was in total shock, I could not believe what was happening.
"I snatched the phone off the counter but he grabbed my arm and scratched me really hard.
"I felt completely violated. It's creepy and perverted to go through someone else's most private pictures without their permission."
When Louise demanded her phone back, she claims the man refused to hand it over unless she coughed up £85 for the repair.
She called the police who attended the shop and confirmed that CCTV shows the man looking through her phone for 15 minutes.
But officers were powerless to act due to a technicality in the law because the man had not downloaded or shared the images.
Louise, a marketing manager from London who was visiting friends in Worcester, added: "When I asked the police for the man's name they refused claiming it was because of GDPR.
"I almost fell over in shock. Basically a strange man can rifle through my private pictures without permission but his identity is protected because of data protection? How is that right?"
The worker involved has since been sacked from The Mobile Doctor.
Shop manager Malik Ali said: "We have resolved the issue in the presence of police.
"The worker involved has been sacked. We have apologised to the customer. Nothing like this will ever happen again in future."
