5 ms·
dicking with people's setups like this is not funny and not to be encouraged. (the problem is that it telegraphs to some people that it's ok not to respect bou
by gjvc 5y ago
dicking with people's setups like this is not funny and not to be encouraged.
(the problem is that it telegraphs to some people that it's ok not to respect boundaries of other people, which in turn can lead to malfeasance)
- coffeebeanHH 5y agoThat's teaching people to lock their machines on leaving the desk. Could also be a thing like redefining while with if. Just one thing should aways occur. Tell the people what you messed up after they got confused. Pranks should not be harmful.
- black6 5y agoThere is a OPSEC fairy at work who will rotate your desktop 90 or 180 degrees or some other benign reminder that you failed to secure your workstation before leaving your desk.
- 4ggr0 5y agoWe would send a mail from their pc to the whole team with a text along the lines of "Hey together, I will buy croissants for everyone tomorrow." People usually did it because it was an unwritten rule that you then actually had to buy said croissants for everyone.
- gjvc 5y agosee, now that's more like it -- croissant supply pranks I can get behind; meddling (however slight) with tools, not so much.
- 4ggr0 5y agoWell, we had both extremes, just to disclose that. The mild version was promising croissants with another mail account, but I also once came back to see that my wallpaper had been changed to a still from a gay porn movie. I think my visible confusion and slight shock was quite entertaining. Of course the second prank can only be done with co-workers you know well, otherwise you could probably end up having to talk to HR.
- coldpie 5y agoSecure from what? Do you have random people walking around your office?
- kevinmchugh 5y agoI've worked in offices big enough that the people who worked upstairs looked were total strangers to me. Social engineering into a building is often not that hard.
- nostoc 5y agoFor anyone who reads this and think it's funny, it is, but do this in the wrong workplace and you'll be the unemployed OPSEC fairy.
- jtms 5y agoIf someone is in OPSEC they generally have a broad license to actually, you know, do their job.
- nostoc 5y agoThe "OPSEC fairy" as referenced in previous post is typically a random coworker, so no, they generally not have a broad license do tinker with your workstation. An actual OPSEC person would not go and change your desktop's background, or send an email for free donuts to all your coworkers. An actual OPSEC person would just write you up for a security violation.
- Moodles 5y agoPeople did something similar to this at my previous job and I always thought it was security theatre. For one thing, there are card swipe in. Second, engineering was upstairs in a restricted area. So you're concerned about a tailgater who opportunistically puts malware on your laptop when you're 100 feet away for a couple minutes without anyone noticing? Or you're concerned about a colleague who's an insider threat... Who is already an insider threat? It's not like there was anything on my laptop which was more sensitive than any other engineer there anyway. It was classic busywork.
- kevinmchugh 5y agoIt's often easier to build a norm for everyone than just the people it really needs to apply to. Managers, salespeople, corp dev, customer representatives all might have sensitive information on their machines. Information that even other employees aren't supposed to see. Rather than trying to enumerate who those people are and teach them, you might assume everyone will eventually have sensitive information, and encourage the mild prank.
- unionpivo 5y agoThe standard way, where i worked for, was to invite whole department/company (depending on size) to a beer. And we held them to it.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago> That's teaching people to lock their machines on leaving the desk. No, that’s being a dick. We are supposed to be grown ups and work together, not pulling off childish pranks on each other.
- piaste 5y agoWho said you're working or grown ups? It's a great prank for college students as well.
- skinkestek 5y agoWell, we've had a rule between grown ups at some places I worked at that whenever someone left a machine unlocked a minor prank was acceptable and even encouraged. Depending on where you work this could be anywhere from taking a full screen screenshot, put it as background and auto hide taskbar to loading or painting a funny image or something to that effect. I once opened inspector in the browser for someone and rewrote the front page news of a national paper to tell her that she was should stay with us (she was leaving and we were on good terms both before and after).
- hnlmorg 5y agoMost of the places I've worked at have had a their own theme for what your desktop background should be set at. One place it was Justin Bieber. Another it was a footballer. It was never anything offensive but still generated a laugh whenever anyone came back and realised they'd been "beibered".
- lalaithion 5y agoI've had my personal computer's background be this picture for about 5 years now, since I forgot to lock it once, and just haven't bothered to change it https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fpics%2Fcomments%2Fd79p45%2Fdid_you_know_that_this_is_bill_gates_sexy_pose%2F&psig=AOvVaw3vxSDu91ncqlG0frbUraqW&ust=1641663450226000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCJCh0oiXoPUCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAP https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit...
- bell-cot 5y ago+1, though I think it's more complex. There are: a.) A lot of contexts where it is reasonable and decent to do. b.) A lot of contexts where it is not reasonable nor decent to do. c.) A lot of people who aren't so good at distinguishing a.) from b.).
- yreg 5y agoYou can e.g. do it to yourself and watch someone else struggle using your machine.
- bool3max 5y agoNo one cares nerd
- gjvc 5y agothe volume of comments suggests otherwise
- dylan604 5y agoif you have dedicated user creds, then it's harder to do that without being root. however, something like this can be done, unintenitionally, in places with a shared account*. one user logs in, and decides to set somethings up that they prefer. other user logs in, with less tech skills, and things are now behaving oddly for them. *yes, this happens for various reasons in the real world
- young_unixer 5y agoI would totally do this to one of my close friends and we'd have a good laugh about it, because implicitly we've allowed each other to cross that boundary. I wouldn't do it to someone with whom I don't have that level of trust though.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- boondaburrah 5y agoas long as you follow the rules 1. make it harmless 2. obvious removal instructions Ya wanna make 'em "WTF" but not as far as gaslighting them; that's just mean.
- marcellus23 5y agoWhether or not something is funny is entirely up to the people involved, obviously. You have no standing to say that something like this shouldn’t be done.
- gjvc 5y agoIt's called an opinion, and don't worry -- it's harmless and won't hurt anyone else.
- hiptobecubic 5y agoIsn't your point that telegraphing the wrong information is bad?
- dylan604 5y agoopinion meets irony
- jonnycomputer 5y agoOpinions are not funny and not to be encouraged.
- blowski 5y agoWhat if I find it funny that somebody does this to me? Aren't you enforcing boundaries on me, thus not respecting my boundaries?
- afiori 5y agothis is a very old debate: you are claiming that people should correctly guess where and when pranks are acceptable, the person you are replying to argues that this is impossible and people should err on not pranking by default. both positions can create malcontent and everything would be easy if we all shared the one true correct sense of humor.
- gjvc 5y agothen you just enjoy it and ignore the opinions you read online.
- LinuxBender 5y agoGiven the prank scripts I wrote in the past to teach people to lock their machines, I would expect far ... far worse. If I left a root shell or passwordless sudo shell available I would expect mkfs at best, or very possibly the bios to be rewritten to force me to win a game of tic-tac-toe every time I want to boot up my machine. Cue Joshua
- gjvc 5y ago"Cue"
- LinuxBender 5y agoRepetition habit, thank-you. I might work with data queues too much.