What are opinions of seeing sensitive data on a hard disk? 4

[apcandmacuser]

Hi:
Suppose you worked on PC's and a computer came in for repair with a bad HD. The customer also asked you to transfer any recoverable data to the new HD. I presume no one has a problem if some illegal activity was discovered and it was reported to the authorities. But what about if the machine belonged to the spouse of a good friend and on it was discovered a nearly year long trail of internet (& live) dating to find a new spouse - and you know your friend doesn't have a clue. What would you do? Would you talk or remain silent?

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

I'd do the same thing if I saw a spouse of one of my friends cheating on them. I'd give them a chance to tell their spouse before I did. Either by me or their spouse they would find out. Then it's just being there for your friend that counts.

 

[BabyJeffy]

apcandmacuser...

An interesting issue you raise. Initially I thought "keep your nose out of it and just do the job"... but I took some time to think on it and see exactly your dilemma. I think the answers are going to be different from everyone - based on many things (including whether they've been cheated on before no doubt).

I agree 100% with SemperFiDownUnda on this... if you are a true friend you will stand by your friend and look out for their best interests (and expect the same back in return). Give the customer (cheating spouse) the chance to explain it to their spouse - and make it clear that if they don't, you will. In my heart, that's the right thing to do.

I hope that the customer doesn't complain to your boss and cause you a bunch of problems... so many times money comes between what is right and wrong (and you end up making a mess when all you wanted to do was help).

All the best on this - I'm sure many of us would appreciate a followup on how you resolved things.

Cheers,
Jeff

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

You also have a legal dilemma... When a customer (whether a friend or not) brings a machine to you to fix, I would assume that some sort of contract exists between you (no business would undertake this work without one, I believe).

If so, you need to check the wording of the contract to see what data protection obligations you have. If you do spill the beans, your company (after all, you are an employee) could face heavy legal action. And even if you don't spill the beans, but instead approach the spouse, they could still complain and/or take legal action, as it's virtually blackmail.

My advice? Keep quiet and do your job.

Dan

 

[apcandmacuser]

Billy
There is no legal dilemma here if the job was done outside of work as a favor to a friend. So it is strictly an ethics issue.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

apcandmacuser,

You said "Suppose you worked on PC's and a computer came in for repair" - this statement gives the impression that it was a work based thing ('you worked'). At no point did you say that that work was done outside of work as a favour for a friend.

If the work was done outside of your workplace/working hours, but was still insitgated at work, then the legal issue still stands.

Dan

 

[Murgle]

What if it turns out that it is actually your friend, who is pretending to be a different gender as they have repressed feelings inside them. You then go to their spouse and tell them what you've found only to discover........oh dear.

Ahhhhh, I see you have a machine that goes Bing!

 

[kippy13]

Say nothing, nothing but harm will come of it-as the last post said it could be something entirely different.


"Sometimes I do not know but I try hard"- R.F. Haughty 1923

 

[kippy13]

Say nothing, nothing but harm will come of it-as the last post said it could be something entirely different. Its not like theres actual cheating going on.....would u tell your friend if it was some adult material u found on the machine? I don t think so.


"Sometimes I do not know but I try hard"- R.F. Haughty 1923

 

[DrJavaJoe]

I think the ethical issue here is why were you nosing around the internet history or reading emails? I could see accidently coming across images but accidently reading emails? Anyway if you did come across it I totally agree with SemperFiDownUnda on this or I suppose you could you could charge the spouse for the repair pretty much whatever you wanted

 

[carrr]

I presume no one has a problem if some illegal activity was discovered and it was reported to the authorities.

Info obtained illegally/outside of proper channels is largely inadmissible. You might actually find yourself the subject of scrutiny if your whistleblowing was the result of improper conduct on your part.

Which...leads me to voice my agreement with DrJavaJoe. What were you doing nosing around? Or is this as hypothetical as it sounds?

 

[ecobb]

Could it be that your computer is the one being worked on?

Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

"Alright Brain, you don't like me, and I don't like you. But lets just do this, and I can get back to killing you with beer." - Homer Simpson

 

[Dollie]

I worked in a small ISP/computer repair shop for a little over a year. I truly think I've seen it all:

*People rushing in after browsing an adult site, "You've got to take this off my computer!" when the site replaces the desktop, adds icons everywhere, and changes the bookmarks/favorites to things like "Your favorite farm girls".

*A newsgroups fanatic having problems with his NG reader, and finding the groups he subscribed to are illegal in every country on earth (yes, reported to police).

*People digging through spouses' files and finding password protected documents they wanted us to break into.

*People bringing in computers and saying "You are not allowed to go through the "TeensXXX" (or something of the sort) directory."

*People saying "I think I found something, can you check it out?" and discovering affairs that would make Jerry Springer blush.

And the best one.... a former co-worker coming in, "My hard drive is full, can you fix it?" and finding that their spouse filled it by browsing questionable sites and had the temporary internet file space set at the hard drive size.

The last one is one scenario where "nosing around" is required. Temporary internet file folders store everything downloaded from the internet, from graphics to scripts to executables. If you're investigating a problem that began occuring while online, the temp files are a good place to start, although it gives you more insight than you usually want about your customer. If you're not, and it's a hardware issue, then yes, you're nosing around.

If it were my friend, I'd tell them in a heartbeat, just because it'd hurt me to not tell them and then watch the situation become worse.

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

I do work on a number of friends computers. Normal fee for this is dinner (usually what ever they are cooking that night). There is no legal problem when a friend asks you to fix your computer. There can be some hairy issues when trying to recover files....have you ever tried to recover mail boxes from outlook express? Sorry but its not as easy as coping them over and saying to your friend "The files are on there .... you work out how to get them to work with outlook agian"

I don't have proceedures down for this so when I do it it is a bit of fiddling around. I often have to go into outlook multiple times before everything is right and with the previw pains there.....hard not to see some information.

The question isn't so much how he/she got to the information but that the information is there. You can handle the situation of "Could it be your friend possing as the opposite gender" (statistically speaking this would mean your friend is a male as the occurances of female cross gender roll playing is miniscule.) by taking to the spounce you suspect as cheating. Say something like "How long have you known Bob?" fill in "Bob" with the name of the other person. But by the "long trail of internet (& live) dating" comment I would think there is no doubt unless your friend is one great looking drag queen. If the "live" thing is hypothetical you'll quickly know if the spouce is cheating. Hestitation, defenciveness, etc. If your question is worded as above and they don't know who you are talking about it should be clear. If they do know then they probably know something is up.

There are 1000's of what ifs you could play out but you know something is wrong you need to support your friend. I never let my friends go out with idiots without me atleast telling them that. If a friend gets cheated on. Then I step in. I won't ignore the situation because that is the easy thing to do. I do what is right for my friend long term. If they are getting cheated on there is something wrong with the relationship and they can't work on it unless they know about it.

 

[apcandmacuser]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply to this post. It is very interesting to see the range of reactions from different users. From Billy, who seems determined to turn it into a legal issue, to several others who are in denial and refuse to believe the facts presented. The 'real' responses appeared to focus more on doing what is right for a friend in the long run rather than ignoring the issue or trying to save your own skin. It is also interesting that when I placed this post, I also posted 2 other technical questions which were somewhat urgent. With the large community of self-professed technical gurus on this site, I expected some assistance on the techical questions, which I did not get. The first post yielded no responses, while the second post did get 2 responses - one which was not helpful and the second was just guessing. However, this post, which has not much to do with technical knowledge, generated more than enough replys. It reminded me of the years I spent in the Corporate environment, where if you needed assistance with a 'work-related' problem, it was a challenge to hunt down someone who was willing to lend a hand. Conversely, if some gossip were circulating or other 'non-work-related' issue arose, almost everyone was anxious to jump in.

 

[kippy13]

What are u on,
Maybe noone was actually able to help you with your technical questions- did u post them in the most relevant forums?
This is an ethics forum and people in here have a big interest in it which is why perhaps u got such a high volume of replys.
I think your comments are unfair and perhaps you need to take a look as to why u couldnt fix ur technical issues urself instead of looking through files of a sensitive nature!

"Sometimes I do not know but I try hard"- R.F. Haughty 1923

 

[CajunCenturion]

I hope that you don't jump to conclusions apcandmacuser about the help that you can and will receive in these forums. I can see that you're a new member of the community and hope that you continue to participate, in both asking and answer questions as you can. The main reason this site is so successful is because of the volunteers who do answer thousands of questions every day.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[lionelhill]

apcandmacuser,
I had a look at your postings. I sort-of agree that light fora like this get more answers than technically exact questions, but that might be because a lot of people are experts in only a few narrow technical fields, but nevertheless able to contribute something to a general field. This forum appeals to more people than a specific forum.

I think you're a little bit harsh on the 2nd "only guessing" response. Life is often like that; the data don't fit what is happening, so the IT-person has to guess at what's going on, try it out, and if that doesn't work, guess again. For instance, you've stated you had 4 identical PCs, but one behaves differently to the other three, so obviously that wasn't strictly true. The person who replied had to guess at the way in which they differ. Actually I agree with him/her; writing your config.nt file in notepad is a much safer way to make sure it really gets written. It may come up with a better error message if, for instance, you are trying to overwrite a hidden version of the file that's already there.

Incidentally, I have yet to have a dos application fail in an XP environment (without any tinkering), but of course if your app uses a lot of files open at the same time (or fails to close its files when it's done...)

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

One thing to note on other forums it that you post may get lost in the sea of posts. When I have time I go back a few pages in posts. Ideally I'd go back as far as all the new posts since my last visit to the forum. Problem is time. Here in this forum we only get a few posts a day so it easy. When strapped for time I normally only look at the first 2 pages in forums. Look at topics and # of replies and see if I can answer any of the 0 replies post.

Personally I like this forum because its good debating. You get to see other peoples views. Though I might come across strong in my beliefs I never mean that their opinions are wrong. The more I understand myself and others the better person I believe I become and this forum helps with that.

 

[apcandmacuser]

If KIPPY13 bothered to look, as LIONELHILL did before he/she (I suspect a she) opened his/her mouth, you would have discovered they were indeed in the proper category instead of resorting to name calling. I'll say this, you sure do get a sense of which people can think clearly, objectively and fairly (when presented with a problem) by reading the responses posted. In our organization, a person with KIPPY's attitude wouldn't last long. This ethics forum really is a good starting point and an excellent way to gain insight on personalities, choices and decisions.