"Anyone else leave a time bomb or easter egg?" Years ago I had a client who promised me thousands of dollars to develop a website. At first he tried to convin

"Anyone else leave a time bomb or easter egg?" Years ago I had a client who promised me thousands of dollars to develop a website. At first he tried to convince me to work in exchange for a percentage of the company, but when I refused he said he would pay me cash. I built the site but never trusted him to pay me so I included a "delete script" that would erase all the code on every html page of the website when a set of three unique parameters were passed to a specific page of the site in a URL. When I was nearly finished with the site he suddenly called to tell me he was on a plane to meet investors and needed me to upload the site to his live server "immediately" so he could do a demo in a few hours. I uploaded it just as he asked, and then he seemed to become invisible or unavailable for more than a week. Hmmm ... After many unsuccessful attempts trying to get him to respond to my calls and emails I finally decided to trigger my delete code. He called within the hour to ask what I might have done to "his" website. I told him he does not own the website because it was still mine until he paid for it. He claimed that I had agreed to wprk in exchange for a percentage of the company, and I laughed. Eventually he asked if I had a copy of the website that I could send him if he paid me, and an hour after I said "yes" the full amount appeared in my bank account. I sent him new copies of the html files (without my delete script) and thankfully I never heard from that dishonest unethical opportunistic client ever again. Lesson learned: Never trust a programming client to do what he promises, even when it is in writing. From that point on I have always asked my clients to prepay for my programming labor. Most of them complain at first, but I give them a discount when they prepay, and that's usually enough to convince them to trust me to do what I say I will do -- instead of me trusting them to pay me later. When they learn that I'm honest and always send a refund when they overpay, they never complain about my payment system again ... but they really appreciate the price break I give them when they prepay.