[tgsovlerkhgsel]

> What’s to say the same companies don’t alter the circuit board

The realities of modifying hardware. Is it possible? Sure. Is a company going to do it routinely at scale? Highly unlikely, because unlike software modifications, this would be pretty expensive. Are you aware of any companies that routinely do _hardware_ modifications on employee Macbooks?

[alexeichemenda]

Not aware of any that do that for laptops but I know 2 personally that do that for phones. They have a collection of devices (phones) trash to go, so it’s not as unscalable as I initially thought because they re-use the devices.

So I’m assuming if some do it for phones, must be some doing it in laptops.

Again. It’s all about probabilities. 1/ What’s the likelihood of the company doing that? Close to none. 2/ what would be the severity of the issue if they were doing that for me? Very high. 3/ what’s the effort level to prevent that? Very little.

This ratio ultimately tells us what to do.