Apple

An Apple store customer was given internal company media and documents by accident after getting his computer serviced at one of the company's Genius Bars, a new report says.

Cult of Mac has posted photos from an unnamed individual who says he was given the hard drive alongside a computer that was being repaired, with that spare drive containing a backup of the store's internal file server as opposed to a backup of the machine that had gone in for repair. The repair was made at an Apple store in Stamford, Conn.

The person told Cult of Mac the drive contains "confidential docs, internal manuals, Apple's sales [techniques], an Apple store work checklist, products layout, time schedules, pictures and videos of Apple corporate activities that only Apple employees can see, videos of store meetings, business structure and much much much more."

The outlet says the man offered to sell it a copy of the drive's contents, but that the offer was declined.

"Cult of Mac does not pay for stories, and especially not things like confidential information or iPhone prototypes. As such, we strongly advised him to return the hard drive to Apple, and even offered to help facilitate the safe return of the disk if he was nervous about the exchange. We have not heard from him since," the outlet said.

The drive itself is labeled "/Volumes/apple store/Backups.backupdb/teamserver/2009-11-23-095346/HD1/Server Users" and "/Volumes/apple store/Backups.backupdb/teamserver/2011-05-18-141707/HD1/Users/admin." Photos posted by Cult of Mac depict numerous backups made to the Time Machine device, dated from April to May of this year.

CNET has contacted Apple with a request for comment.