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Good lord. Smart people doing the dumbest things with their work equipment. I have a former coworker who was the VP of Finance at my company. He suddenly got

Good lord. Smart people doing the dumbest things with their work equipment. I have a former coworker who was the VP of Finance at my company. He suddenly got fired out of the blue. The company was in the midst of trying to find a buyer (this was announced) so this was extra surprising. Turns out, he knew a lot of bad news about the company, and they caught him looking for a job. They fired him because he was too much of a liability. How did they catch him? He was putting resumes and cover letters on OneDrive. "Yeah, in retrospect, that's one of the dumber things I've ever done," he said to me later.

ebbi 15d ago
We have a plague here in NZ of top-level Police officers using work-issued devices to access and store CSAM material.
- computerex 15d ago
  Wow that got dark real quick, mind sharing any links/evidence? Never would have thought NZ has a CSAM problem.
  - comradesmith 15d ago
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-police-officer-matthew-rogers-pleads-guilty-to-one-objectionable-publication-charge/ENLIZOW5WBEU5BYQQBOPUSETAY/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-police-officer-matthe... Here’s one. There are more. Don’t be so naïve as to think any single country is free from these kinds of issues.
  - MrKiwi 15d ago
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/1101088/auckland-detective-pleads-guilty-to-possessing-objectionable-publications https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/1101088/aucklan... https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/second-auckland-police-officer-charged-with-possessing-objectionable-publications-pleads-guilty/7DNCGUQM2NDXBOXM23JYJTVOA4/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/second-auckland-police-officer... https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/567348/revealed-child-exploitation-and-bestiality-material-allegedly-found-on-former-deputy-police-commissioner-jevon-mcskimming-s-work-devices https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/567348/revealed... It's not all sunshine and rainbows in our little country
    - apatheticonion 15d ago
      It's rarely sunshine, but there are a lot of rainbows!
    - jasonfarnon 15d ago
      I mean, the headline says "second". Anything greater than 0 is bad but seems a little short of a "plague".
      - ebbi 15d ago
        Anything greater than 0, in leadership roles of the organization that should be one the most highly trusted in the country, is a plague.
        senordevnyc 15d ago
        It’s horrible, it deserves severe legal punishment, but “plague” to me implies a broad pattern.
        jasonfarnon 15d ago
        so you would call it a "plague" if it was just one guy? hopefully you can see how ridiculous that would work out in practice.
        defrost 15d ago
        From the sysadmin PoV it's never "one guy" or even "just two"; what is common, however, is just one or two policemen, one or two soldiers, or one two judges make the news and the limelight of public prosecutions. It's good to be seen to be tackling this kind of behaviour, rarely ever good (apparently) to fully rip the band aid off and report just how wide spread such behaviour can go.
      - lostlogin 15d ago
        The first link appears to say 22 cases. 12 have faced sanction.
  - ebbi 15d ago
    I can't find the stat, but if memory serves me correctly, NZ over-indexes in CSAM-related crime. It's unfortunate, but it's not always good news down on our little islands.
  - blks 15d ago
    Why not? It’s the same as everywhere else, it has men. Just knowing that places like Kiwi Farms exists is enough evidence of good number of garbage people
0cf8612b2e1e 15d ago
I am constantly dumb founded at the people who conduct deeply personal business on a company laptop. Some individuals do not even own their own computer. Has every job hunt they have pursued has been done on their previous employers equipment?
- cucumber3732842 15d ago
  >Has every job hunt they have pursued has been done on their previous employers equipment? Yes. And the resume was updated and the applications filed while on the clock. https://youtu.be/WcyNWbx8kAo?t=4 https://youtu.be/WcyNWbx8kAo?t=4 (the timestamp is important)
  - vkou 15d ago
    If you're salaried, every moment of time in your life is on the clock.
    - stogot 15d ago
      That depends on jurisdiction
    - pjmlp 13d ago
      Certainly not in European countries, although probably irrelevant in this case.
- sokoloff 15d ago
  I have more personally owned computers than is reasonable, but I can understand people who get issued a company laptop and use it for everything. It’s a couple hundred bucks a year to keep a personal laptop and if you’re mostly accessing cloud services, I can easily understand the temptation to use a company laptop for it all.
  - sixsevenrot 15d ago
    Also, when you travel or even commute using public transport, you don't always want to carry two laptops around.
senectus1 15d ago
being dodgy is hard work. it takes effort to maintain and the longer you maintain it the cumulatively harder it is to get away with.
duxup 15d ago
A coworker of mine once answered the wrong cell phone and said the wrong company name. (He was working for a competitor as well as our company.) Another turned his computer that “wouldn’t behave” into IT, full of porn.
- sen 15d ago
  > Another turned his computer that “wouldn’t behave” into IT, full of porn. Every tech support worker has seen this countless times. So many people are completely blind to the idea that turning your device over to support means support can actually see what’s on your device…
  - tornado134 15d ago
    [dead]
  - duxup 14d ago
    It’s wild. It’s one of those “Do we have to tell you people to not do this?!?!?”
- debugnik 15d ago
  A professor at a vocational training degree shared us a VM for a class project. Filled with dozens of porn bookmarks. He eventually realised and stayed after class to delete the VM from every class computer, deleting all the work of classmates who didn't take a backup home. This prompted the people who lost their work to actually report the porn in revenge.
alexjplant 15d ago
To paraphrase the sage Jimmy McMillan: the number of people who interview on their work laptops is too damn high. I'm always flabbergasted when they admit this and not once has somebody who did so passed. IME there's a strong correlation between good judgment and technical prowess in this regard but I suppose stories like this prove me wrong.
- alyeska2 15d ago
  Who cares? A modern worker is on Zoom meetings for multiple hours a day, if one of those hours happens to be talking to a recruiter or hiring manager, so what? People also sometimes talk to their kids school or their dentist or the plumber at their house during the work day. I'm a people manager, and I wouldn't bat an eye at a candidate I was interviewing joining the zoom from their work laptop and I wouldn't care if someone on my team used their work laptop rather than their personal device if they were interviewing elsewhere.
busyant 15d ago
I worked at a pharmaceutical start-up years ago. * one of our medicinal chemists had studied nights to become a patent agent (this isn't the bad part). * he landed a pretty nice job at an IP firm with a considerable raise in his salary. * we were _in the middle of his farewell party_ when the IT guy told the CEO that during the previous few days the chemist had printed our company's entire library of novel chemical structures and their associated biological activity data. * in the moment, i had no idea what was happening, but i've never seen someone go from looking happy to absolutely miserable at their own farewell party. * i do remember that my boss later said she wanted him frog-marched out of the building in handcuffs.

ebbi 15d ago

We have a plague here in NZ of top-level Police officers using work-issued devices to access and store CSAM material.

computerex 15d ago
Wow that got dark real quick, mind sharing any links/evidence? Never would have thought NZ has a CSAM problem.
- comradesmith 15d ago
  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-police-officer-matthew-rogers-pleads-guilty-to-one-objectionable-publication-charge/ENLIZOW5WBEU5BYQQBOPUSETAY/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-police-officer-matthe... Here’s one. There are more. Don’t be so naïve as to think any single country is free from these kinds of issues.
- MrKiwi 15d ago
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/1101088/auckland-detective-pleads-guilty-to-possessing-objectionable-publications https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/1101088/aucklan... https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/second-auckland-police-officer-charged-with-possessing-objectionable-publications-pleads-guilty/7DNCGUQM2NDXBOXM23JYJTVOA4/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/second-auckland-police-officer... https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/567348/revealed-child-exploitation-and-bestiality-material-allegedly-found-on-former-deputy-police-commissioner-jevon-mcskimming-s-work-devices https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/567348/revealed... It's not all sunshine and rainbows in our little country
  - apatheticonion 15d ago
    It's rarely sunshine, but there are a lot of rainbows!
  - jasonfarnon 15d ago
    I mean, the headline says "second". Anything greater than 0 is bad but seems a little short of a "plague".
    - ebbi 15d ago
      Anything greater than 0, in leadership roles of the organization that should be one the most highly trusted in the country, is a plague.
      - senordevnyc 15d ago
        It’s horrible, it deserves severe legal punishment, but “plague” to me implies a broad pattern.
      - jasonfarnon 15d ago
        so you would call it a "plague" if it was just one guy? hopefully you can see how ridiculous that would work out in practice.
        defrost 15d ago
        From the sysadmin PoV it's never "one guy" or even "just two"; what is common, however, is just one or two policemen, one or two soldiers, or one two judges make the news and the limelight of public prosecutions. It's good to be seen to be tackling this kind of behaviour, rarely ever good (apparently) to fully rip the band aid off and report just how wide spread such behaviour can go.
    - lostlogin 15d ago
      The first link appears to say 22 cases. 12 have faced sanction.
- ebbi 15d ago
  I can't find the stat, but if memory serves me correctly, NZ over-indexes in CSAM-related crime. It's unfortunate, but it's not always good news down on our little islands.
- blks 15d ago
  Why not? It’s the same as everywhere else, it has men. Just knowing that places like Kiwi Farms exists is enough evidence of good number of garbage people

0cf8612b2e1e 15d ago

I am constantly dumb founded at the people who conduct deeply personal business on a company laptop. Some individuals do not even own their own computer. Has every job hunt they have pursued has been done on their previous employers equipment?

cucumber3732842 15d ago
>Has every job hunt they have pursued has been done on their previous employers equipment? Yes. And the resume was updated and the applications filed while on the clock. https://youtu.be/WcyNWbx8kAo?t=4 https://youtu.be/WcyNWbx8kAo?t=4 (the timestamp is important)
- vkou 15d ago
  If you're salaried, every moment of time in your life is on the clock.
  - stogot 15d ago
    That depends on jurisdiction
  - pjmlp 13d ago
    Certainly not in European countries, although probably irrelevant in this case.
sokoloff 15d ago
I have more personally owned computers than is reasonable, but I can understand people who get issued a company laptop and use it for everything. It’s a couple hundred bucks a year to keep a personal laptop and if you’re mostly accessing cloud services, I can easily understand the temptation to use a company laptop for it all.
- sixsevenrot 15d ago
  Also, when you travel or even commute using public transport, you don't always want to carry two laptops around.

senectus1 15d ago

being dodgy is hard work. it takes effort to maintain and the longer you maintain it the cumulatively harder it is to get away with.

duxup 15d ago

A coworker of mine once answered the wrong cell phone and said the wrong company name. (He was working for a competitor as well as our company.) Another turned his computer that “wouldn’t behave” into IT, full of porn.

sen 15d ago
> Another turned his computer that “wouldn’t behave” into IT, full of porn. Every tech support worker has seen this countless times. So many people are completely blind to the idea that turning your device over to support means support can actually see what’s on your device…
- tornado134 15d ago
  [dead]
- duxup 14d ago
  It’s wild. It’s one of those “Do we have to tell you people to not do this?!?!?”
debugnik 15d ago
A professor at a vocational training degree shared us a VM for a class project. Filled with dozens of porn bookmarks. He eventually realised and stayed after class to delete the VM from every class computer, deleting all the work of classmates who didn't take a backup home. This prompted the people who lost their work to actually report the porn in revenge.

alexjplant 15d ago

To paraphrase the sage Jimmy McMillan: the number of people who interview on their work laptops is too damn high. I'm always flabbergasted when they admit this and not once has somebody who did so passed. IME there's a strong correlation between good judgment and technical prowess in this regard but I suppose stories like this prove me wrong.

alyeska2 15d ago
Who cares? A modern worker is on Zoom meetings for multiple hours a day, if one of those hours happens to be talking to a recruiter or hiring manager, so what? People also sometimes talk to their kids school or their dentist or the plumber at their house during the work day. I'm a people manager, and I wouldn't bat an eye at a candidate I was interviewing joining the zoom from their work laptop and I wouldn't care if someone on my team used their work laptop rather than their personal device if they were interviewing elsewhere.

busyant 15d ago

I worked at a pharmaceutical start-up years ago. * one of our medicinal chemists had studied nights to become a patent agent (this isn't the bad part). * he landed a pretty nice job at an IP firm with a considerable raise in his salary. * we were _in the middle of his farewell party_ when the IT guy told the CEO that during the previous few days the chemist had printed our company's entire library of novel chemical structures and their associated biological activity data. * in the moment, i had no idea what was happening, but i've never seen someone go from looking happy to absolutely miserable at their own farewell party. * i do remember that my boss later said she wanted him frog-marched out of the building in handcuffs.