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Interesting. In Finland house cleaning services are usually provided by big companies with native workers and I think they usually do the cleaning while people are away. It's easier to track those companies' reputations than to try to hire a reliable house cleaner yourself. Giving the company a copy of your key is migitated by having two locks (which is the default) and designated hours of service. Perhaps a different kind of an image was evoked in your mind based on where you live?
I probably wouldn't put up with this kind of a scheme either if I had enough stuff worth stealing in my house that I couldn't reliably keep track of and my insurance sucked. I couldn't care less if strangers visit my house while I'm away if they don't steal (or plan to steal) or destroy anything.
Finnish, wouldn't let unknown cleaning staff in my house unwatched. I'd need to get a safe, and I still wouldn't know that there isn't going to be an off-the-shelf hardware keylogger in my PC that will go live the next time I go online banking when I get back.
I'd probably be fine with strangers cleaning my house if I didn't need to worry about identity theft and digital security though.
I hadn't thought of a hardware keylogger, but incidentally I have a lock in my PC case and the USB ports are visible. Do you know in what kinds of ports you could plug an off-the-shelf one? With the relevant skills you could probably plug a DIY one almost anywhere.
House cleaners are probably the antithesis of tech oriented people unless they do the cleaning for the specific purpose of cyber-theft, which could be convoluted if the companies require any kind of certification in cleaning. Ideally I would design my apartment as theft-proof as possible regardless of services from strangers though, so can you come up with any other scary scenarios?
No idea. The whole idea is that I shouldn't need to know much about physical data security on the principle that untrusted people can't physically access my machines.
I'm thinking of an organized crime operation that uses the house cleaners for easy access to people's homes and a ready-made hardware attack designed by someone else that the house cleaner just operates by rote instruction.
Also, I'm assuming the standard stereotypes for menial workers being utterly technology illiterate apply much less to anyone under 30 who grew up in a country with ubiquitous IT.
(As Finnish), my reaction to the thought of employing a cleaning service is approximately the same as kalium's.
Why do you think it's so?
Not sure. Combination of general preference for privacy, and also awareness of the fact there's a bunch of stuff that a malicious person could do in my apartment to inconvenience me later on that wouldn't be immediately apparent. (E.g. steal something inconspicious enough that I'd just think I'd misplaced it, or look at papers with my personal identity number for use in identity theft.)
I don't think theft is my whole concern/squick here. I get upset when my possessions are moved to places that don't match my intuition. Back in college the cleaners put my shoes in the closet once and I couldn't find them for a month because they go by the door dammit. Which was OK, because it was college and I wasn't taking any labs at the time, but still.
Privacy is also pretty important to me, both for visceral and practical reasons. Practically, there are plenty of legal hobbies that look very similar to illegal activities, and people are ignorant. I have heard of enough cases of neighbors mistaking tomatoes and okra for marijuana that I really don't want to count on strangers believing that the white fuzz in those jars is going to become tasty oyster mushrooms and not some other kind of mushroom.