Dear Ex-Employee

[dubhain.livejournal.com]

Oh, you did not try and delete all the mission-critical data on your PC before quitting the agency.

You did?

::Sigh.:: Yeah, I'll be doing file recovery the rest of this morning.

[ObDisclaimer: Yes, I know there should've been backups of any and all mission-critical data. Tell that to the users and their management.]

::Grumble.::

Comments

[kageneko.livejournal.com]

Oh, GetDataBack is your friend. I love that program.

And yeah, users never back up their data. It doesn't matter what the policy is.

[jecook]

Hells yes. It's saved my bacon at least once.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I've had employees get fired, have access to everythig for the rest of the day, and then I don't get told for a week so I could kill their access!

[kukla-red.livejournal.com]

Why do people even bother doing that? Word will spread in the industry and their reputation will be mud. Is it worth it for a few minutes of mad giggling when you really can't do any damage anyway?

[shaking head] People can be such idiots.

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

As I understand it criminal charges can be laid as well.

[kukla-red.livejournal.com]

Very true. I work for a law firm and there have been prosecutions for this kind of stupidity.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Why do people even bother doing that?

Revenege is no less sweet for being irrational.

Word will spread in the industry and their reputation will be mud.

Right, the way idiot managers who cost their companies money for their stupid and pointless wastes of manhours find their reputations spreading and making them unhireable.


Is it worth it for a few minutes of mad giggling when you really can't do any damage anyway?

Requiring hours or days of heroic recovery effort *is* damage, and if the remaining people are inept idiots, it could easily be permanent damage.


Of course, I would never do this. Unless, it was a work-for-hire position, and I was doing it to work whose hire had not been forthcoming, and so was legally mine to do with as I saw fit.

[kukla-red.livejournal.com]

In my industry, word spreads. And people who have pulled crap like this have been completely ostracized in this area. It happens.

[ucnu112.livejournal.com]

We had a gal do that here... and she was merely transferring to another location in the company.

[tregare.livejournal.com]

last place I quit, I checked all my company documents and scripts and programs into CVS, and wiped my machine with Killdisk Pro and blew the clean company install image back onto the machine, just to make sure that there was -0- personal data left on the machine at all, sent an email to my soon to be former manager telling them where the documents, scripts and programs I wrote while there were. Then I packed my stuff in my cube and took it to my car.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Same here. I burned all my e-mail and documents onto a CD (for my own archive) and copied everything to the server. Then I used DBAN on the machine to wipe it out completely.

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

My last job the hard disk actually packed in on my last day. It was awesome.

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

I'd bill the former employee for data recovery services.

I bet it would hold up in court.

[jher.livejournal.com]

pull the drive (for ZUUL's sake, don't power it up!) and run this over it via a usb enclosure.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Why would you even think of relying on lusers to do backups? Why was there any mission-critical data being kept on a single individual's PC and not on a backed-up file share?

Standard policy for me with lusers' PCs if, if you've fscked up your machine, it gets reimaged. Sorry about the photos of your kids and the spyware-riffic screensaver you downloaded from where-the-hell-ever. If you weren't storing important data on the network share, losing it is your own damn fault.

[dubhain.livejournal.com]

See bit in original post concerning users and their management.

I work for my agency. I do not run it, nor do I necessarily agree with its management decisions.

[vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I read this, and wonder if perhaps people are attributing malice to what may possibly be *just* pure stupidity?

Imagine if you will the following (flawed) chain of logic:
1) This is 'my' computer.
2) Since this is 'my' computer, this is 'my' data.
3) Before leaving the company, I must remove 'my' data', and leave the computer in the pristine state it was in when it was given to me.

Think 'cleaning out your desk' as done by the braindead...