5 ms·

I also did this in the 2000s and while it was fun to peer into their lives, the amount of porn I was forced to see on elderly people's machines was... not great

I also did this in the 2000s and while it was fun to peer into their lives, the amount of porn I was forced to see on elderly people's machines was... not great. Especially during those rare occurrences where they wanted to watch what I was doing to "learn how to use the computer." Just awkward all around.

thelittleone 3y ago
Found same on laptop of an insurance company CFO. Had to ignore it.
- lozf 3y ago
  Yup, C-level execs changing file extensions from .avi to .xls etc. lol.
  - alienthrowaway 3y ago
    I found a stash of porn in C:\Windows\System22 - it caught my attention because I figured it had to be some malware.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  One of the directors backed up his laptop by copying all his data to a network folder that we primarily used for development. Was looking for a specific image and found whole folder of photos of my boss (director's very, very attractive wife) naked. I had to tell him before anyone else found them. He just grinned, asked if I'd seen them, and then deleted them.
qingcharles 3y ago
It's weird, I must have repaired hundreds of computers. Hundreds of backups, reinstalls, but never once did I come across any porn. This was around 1995 though, so it was very early days of the Internet, and pre-digital cameras. Now, in the early 2000s I had to buy dozens of smartphones to test out an SMS relay (SMSC). I bought them all on eBay. Like 70% of them had homemade porn of the owners on them still...!
- dingdong33 3y ago
  Could you share them?
- refulgentis 3y ago
  The variety of stories, nonchalance with which you tell them, and a few key signs of exaggeration had me writing off your comments. This one has me publicly saying it. yeah, sure, all those "early 2000s" "smart phones" with "video" and enough capacity for "home made porn" That was way too short ago to exaggerate this baldly.
  - effingwewt 3y ago
    You've probably never had to repair phones or buy them online used. What op said very much lines up with my own experience. I remember flip phones with all kinds of stuff on them.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Early 2000’s we’re talking phones like the Nokia 6600 https://www.cnet.com/reviews/nokia-6600-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/nokia-6600-review/ > You can also capture the moment on video with the handset's video recorder, which renders brief (10-second), fuzzy images and lo-fi audio. The 6600 stores clips as QCIF files in resolutions of either 176x144 or 128x96, and you can play them using the phone's onboard RealOne player. We got an undeniable kick out of shooting video with the 6600, but the actual clips aren't exactly Oscar worthy. As with the phone book, picture and video storage is limited by only the phone's available memory, but if you're running low, you can store your recordings on the included 32MB MMC media. Nobody’s saying they were hour long HD professional porn productions
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      That's why serial exaggerators are corrosive to a community. Yeah, did phones with a video camera exist? Yup. You would have had to be there, know the 8-step fermi estimate chain for the likelihood for a multitude of reasons. (ex. these were slow, terrible beasts extremely difficult to use, they'd very rarely be a heat of the moment option, and if you were preparing, there were a multitude of 100x quality options that anyone who had a video shooting phone then would have had) Even then you have no defense for taking them too literally, there could be 1000 reasons you're actually just angry and taking it out on them, have a personal dislike, etc. Another way to talk about why it's clear: inter-alia, multiple rich "bored housewives" throwing themselves at computer repairmen is about as likely as obtaining multiple smart phones with video capabilities and videos and selfshot porn videos on them in the early 2000s. Much less when you start throwing stuff in like "actually I was warned of [the housewives x computer repairman problem] before I took the job!" Lmao. Usually you wanna be thinking about the cumulative probability of what they say, not the one-off probability.
Nextgrid 3y ago
Had a similar experience. Long ago when I was younger and poorer I offered IT support on my country's equivalent of Craigslist. Fairly well-off elderly chap wanted me to fix his laptop - was an underpowered machine that somehow got Vista installed on it (but no graphics drivers, so everything was in 640x480) so was unusably slow. Now the proper answer to that would be to just tell him to buy a new computer, but I didn't want to let him down so I figured this machine might be salvageable with a lightweight Linux distro. Couple months pass by and then I get a call. He's asking why videos aren't working. I ask him what website it was - "double-you double-you double-you... dot... x... hamster... dot com". Now I didn't particularly care about his extracurricular activities, got him to curl|bash a script I wrote on the spot to get SSH access and installed the Flash player I forgot and sent him on his way. I was surprised he'd just openly admit to it though.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
  Did you remember to disable the open ssh server and NAT hole puncher after you finished with installation?
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Pretty sure the script made his machine SSH back to one of mine rather than open ports.

thelittleone 3y ago

Found same on laptop of an insurance company CFO. Had to ignore it.

lozf 3y ago
Yup, C-level execs changing file extensions from .avi to .xls etc. lol.
- alienthrowaway 3y ago
  I found a stash of porn in C:\Windows\System22 - it caught my attention because I figured it had to be some malware.
qingcharles 3y ago
One of the directors backed up his laptop by copying all his data to a network folder that we primarily used for development. Was looking for a specific image and found whole folder of photos of my boss (director's very, very attractive wife) naked. I had to tell him before anyone else found them. He just grinned, asked if I'd seen them, and then deleted them.

qingcharles 3y ago

It's weird, I must have repaired hundreds of computers. Hundreds of backups, reinstalls, but never once did I come across any porn. This was around 1995 though, so it was very early days of the Internet, and pre-digital cameras. Now, in the early 2000s I had to buy dozens of smartphones to test out an SMS relay (SMSC). I bought them all on eBay. Like 70% of them had homemade porn of the owners on them still...!

dingdong33 3y ago
Could you share them?
refulgentis 3y ago
The variety of stories, nonchalance with which you tell them, and a few key signs of exaggeration had me writing off your comments. This one has me publicly saying it. yeah, sure, all those "early 2000s" "smart phones" with "video" and enough capacity for "home made porn" That was way too short ago to exaggerate this baldly.
- effingwewt 3y ago
  You've probably never had to repair phones or buy them online used. What op said very much lines up with my own experience. I remember flip phones with all kinds of stuff on them.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Early 2000’s we’re talking phones like the Nokia 6600 https://www.cnet.com/reviews/nokia-6600-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/nokia-6600-review/ > You can also capture the moment on video with the handset's video recorder, which renders brief (10-second), fuzzy images and lo-fi audio. The 6600 stores clips as QCIF files in resolutions of either 176x144 or 128x96, and you can play them using the phone's onboard RealOne player. We got an undeniable kick out of shooting video with the 6600, but the actual clips aren't exactly Oscar worthy. As with the phone book, picture and video storage is limited by only the phone's available memory, but if you're running low, you can store your recordings on the included 32MB MMC media. Nobody’s saying they were hour long HD professional porn productions
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    That's why serial exaggerators are corrosive to a community. Yeah, did phones with a video camera exist? Yup. You would have had to be there, know the 8-step fermi estimate chain for the likelihood for a multitude of reasons. (ex. these were slow, terrible beasts extremely difficult to use, they'd very rarely be a heat of the moment option, and if you were preparing, there were a multitude of 100x quality options that anyone who had a video shooting phone then would have had) Even then you have no defense for taking them too literally, there could be 1000 reasons you're actually just angry and taking it out on them, have a personal dislike, etc. Another way to talk about why it's clear: inter-alia, multiple rich "bored housewives" throwing themselves at computer repairmen is about as likely as obtaining multiple smart phones with video capabilities and videos and selfshot porn videos on them in the early 2000s. Much less when you start throwing stuff in like "actually I was warned of [the housewives x computer repairman problem] before I took the job!" Lmao. Usually you wanna be thinking about the cumulative probability of what they say, not the one-off probability.

Nextgrid 3y ago

Had a similar experience. Long ago when I was younger and poorer I offered IT support on my country's equivalent of Craigslist. Fairly well-off elderly chap wanted me to fix his laptop - was an underpowered machine that somehow got Vista installed on it (but no graphics drivers, so everything was in 640x480) so was unusably slow. Now the proper answer to that would be to just tell him to buy a new computer, but I didn't want to let him down so I figured this machine might be salvageable with a lightweight Linux distro. Couple months pass by and then I get a call. He's asking why videos aren't working. I ask him what website it was - "double-you double-you double-you... dot... x... hamster... dot com". Now I didn't particularly care about his extracurricular activities, got him to curl|bash a script I wrote on the spot to get SSH access and installed the Flash player I forgot and sent him on his way. I was surprised he'd just openly admit to it though.

KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
Did you remember to disable the open ssh server and NAT hole puncher after you finished with installation?
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Pretty sure the script made his machine SSH back to one of mine rather than open ports.