amge

Are there any Sys admins here at a company who have see way too much info about a co-worker?

I am the sys admin for our company e-mail system. Well the e-mail queue was bogged down so I started to see what was in queue.

Through the process of going through all out bound e-mail,
I found a co-worker (who is married) sending love letters to her lover (which is not her husband), and other detailed information to one of her best friends about her love affair.

Anyway this co-worker is hot as hell, and I can't believe some of the things she has done with this other guy.

If you found out this type of information, how do you feel.

After reading this, I lost respect for her, but damn how I would like to get some of that......

Other than some people sending their resumes and things like that I think this was just too much information I need to know.

Any one else see anything juicy?

Sparhawk

do you wear this around the office?

<img src="http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/front/lg-i-read-your-email.jpg" alt="I read your e-mail">

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EleqTrizi'T

I think it would be rather unprofessional of me to go into detail about what I've seen, but I will say as the email admin AND the keeper of the web logs, yes, I've discovered some things.

Some of it was disturbing, some of it was sort of ... "wow I would of never guessed".. some of it amusing.

All I can do is encourage people to keep their more personal surfing at home.

oblar

Not sure how ethical it is to discuss these things here, but I must echo the response about doing personal surfing at home..

Whenever I am on anyone elses network I always surf and email as though everything I am doing is being observed, because it can be.

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irateplatypus

i'm a tech (not an admin), but i am pretty involved with what is going on in my organization with regards to network computing. yeah, its not really ethical to speak of things like this specifically... but there are definitely things going on that fit into the mold you asked about. even though your network admin may not always do so, they can always watch you if they care enough to observe.

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Corneo

Please spill the beans. I wanna know all the stuff you read. *Runs to make popcorn*

bparker805

Yeah, whats so unethical? I wont tell, so by all means dish out all the lurid details... please.

WarWagon

I used to be an admin for the school network back in high school. The same few websites from one particular IP kept coming up day in and day out, and this ip also took up a tremendous amount of bandwidth. Turns out the women who headed one of the computer labs did nothing but surf soap opera websites during the entire work day, and was part of an erotica newsgroup...

The school decided they could think of better places to put her salary.

tritium

I use a packetsniffer called Iris to monitor traffic on my network. The program will also reassemble HTML and IMAP requests by default so I wind up reading a lot of what my users are accessing. To say the absolute least, I concur with the conclusion that users should be much more careful in what sites they visit on LANs -- anyone using the Iris software (or any packet sniffing program for that matter) can easily watch your surfing behaviors. Moreover, since none of us have a direct connection to the net and must use an ISP, its silly to worry about monitoring 24/7 ... you will be watched regardless of whether you surf at home, work or school...

Big brother is out there reading this post. Therefore, Eat me!

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Blah.

tritium

BTW, should this be in the sexuality forum? Almost feels like a technology thread to me.

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Blah.

charliex

i have to say i find it a tad hyocritical you seemingly complain about the woman being unethical when you are reading someone elses email. If you can't tell the difference between regular emails and some spam bot type of thing bogging down an email queue that makes you read each email, well i dunno.

then again everyone doing something seemingly wrong to others always has justification for it, i'm sure she does too.

everyone has their skeletons, half the sysadmins i know have the biggest network share of mp3s and porno

arch13

Actaully, from a legal perspective he has a right to read any company email he so chooses. The courts have said time and again that you cannot expect privacy at work in refrence to internet use/abuse. In fact, no one has a right to internet privacy at work. And the company has no obligation to inform you at any time that they can view all you view. The courts have ruled that the knowledge of monitored access in a workplace is implicant in the use of a workplaces internet connection.

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God of Thunder

Before landing my current job, I was a contracter for about three years. I was in and out of several different companys doing tech support and deployments. Part of the deployment process usually involves backing up the current users info to the netork before upgrading.

Once while looking through a persons hard drive, I saw a folder of pictures. So I opened them to see what they were. They were pictures of a very hot looking woman in various staes of dress and undress. As I looked around the guy's cubicle I see more pictures of the woman (clothed). Apperently these were pic of the guy's wife.

So, I did the good thing. I backed them up and restored them to the guy's new machine. No need to lose those.

Remember this folks, the PC sitting on your desk at work does not belong to you, it belongs to the company you work for. They have the right at any time to see what info is on it.

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skinbag

Excellent thread, lots of potential..Too bad I'm not privy to anything interesting. C'mon people who know, keep it general and there is no ethical problem. Just hypothetical..nudge-nudge wink-wink.

TwoToTango

Not really admin stuff but...

Once a long time ago a co-worker told me
he'd left some files I needed in his home
directory. When I went looking for them,
they weren't there, and while hunting I
stumbled across a collection of stories he'd
saved from usenet.

They were all in the forced-feminization
genre: stories about dominant women who
compel submissive men to dress and act
as women.

Can't say I ever looked at the guy in the
same light again.

In that instance, a simple chmod would have
kept everything nice and private.

Cynthetiq

large network of thousands of nodes.... top to bottom....

it's like client attorney privilege. unless it's something that is very bad like child porn or embezzling... it stays with me. and no i'm not telling any stories either.

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Bloodslick

I wish I was in a position to learn telling things about people. I have to actually become friends with them before I start getting the juicy details.

poof

Awww, cmon! Share the good stuff!

Your not doctors, lawyers. There is no "expectation of privacy" on a corporate lan.

My work extension is .mil. Bleeve me, what you send is up for grabs and gonna be related to the appropriate people.

Pragma

poof: Mine as well, and man are there some good stories that I shouldn't really tell about stuff we've found on people's work computers.

We all sign a paper when we come in that says "everything we do, down the smallest keystroke, is under no expectation of privacy whatsoever and we consent to monitoring" - public sector may be different, but that's the way things are run here.

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Mephisto2

Actually, from an ethical perspective he cannot. He is a hypocrite. Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do something.

The post implied he was titillated by reading the woman's personal emails. I'm quite sure that's not ethical or moral. It's certainly just nasty.

Hide behind the law if you wish. But acknowledge hypocrisy when it rears its ugly head.

Mr Mephisto

Baldrick

While I am not a member of our Sys Admin team, I am a manager in a sales/marketing team.

We had an employee (a VERY attractive female sales rep) who was let go very suddenly, and after she was let go we had to go through her e-mail to find out what was going on with her accounts. Lo and behold, we found several very descriptive e-mails to/from <b><u> several</b></u> guys about her extramarital trysts.

After witnessing (and albeit, participating) in the jokes, I have been very careful of what I type in e-mails from that point forward. ?)

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chodarama

I'm the senior admin at mid-large sized company and I only read an employee's email when a manager asks me to. This usually happens when someone is suspected to be leaving the company. I've been tempted, but, really, unless they are trying to fuck up the network I mostly look the other way. Some interesting shit I've encountered: unfaithful spouses and sharing of customer contacts. Nothing really strange unfortunately. Of course, if anybody wants their email to be private, use GNUPG or simply wait to do personal stuff until you get home.

Pragma

Agreed - I can't believe how many people mistakenly think that "oh, it's ok, I can do all of my personal stuff here at work and no one will notice." We even had one guy trying to run his own business from work - we noticed a ton of e-mail hitting his account and checked in on what it was.

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oberon

As a system/network administrator, I do not meddle with other people's stuff unless told to by higher-ups. (I've never been told to.)

I really do not want to know what this or that coworker's latest escapade was like.

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amge

No AssHat, I wasn't going into her e-mail to jack off to.

I was checking to see what was Work related e-mail and Non-work related e-mail. And moving the Work related e-mail back into the queue and after the traffic was gone, put the non-work related e-mail into the queue. This is an on going thing with a corporate email server supporting 800 users. On some occations I see personal letters, or resumes. I have even caught someone selling our prototype parts to a competitor.

I'm not going to upper management to do my job as the System administrator. If my systems are running slow, or I am running out of disk space because of personal things I'm going to do my job. If I end up reading their personal shit, too bad it. It's on company resources, and there is no expectation of privacy.

As for losing respect, I was just saying I can't believe what she says about marriage, some of her beliefs she says she has to people.

As for titillated by this. Oh ok if you don't see a beautiful woman, I guess you don't think about having sex with her.

As for this posting, I was wondering how people feel when they find out too much information about a person.

Stargazer01

Please. Define Ethical? Define Moral? It will always very from person to person. You shouldn't pass judgement on what another does.

My .02

Sexodus

I think this post should be sent out to all Companys..

To be posted in the LUNCH ROOMS

then lets see how many people do personal shit LOL

Mephisto2

Please indeed.

What do you mean I shouldn't pass judgement on someone.

Opening someone's mail and reading it, especially for sexual gratificaiton, is wrong. No different from opening the physical letters. Maybe the user should be more prudent, but that doesn't change the facts.

Looking into someone's window when they undress is wrong.

Trying to look up someone's skirt is wrong.

That is what I mean. I'm sorry you don't see it as wrong to get sexual thrills from reading someone's private emails. I'm happy I don't work with you.

Finally, of course you can pass judgement on people. You think what al-Queada did was wrong, don't you? They don't. Doesn't mean you can't comment.

Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

Well, once you resort to insulting someone you lose all credibility. You posted asking for opinions. You got some. And now you call me an asshat?

Right...

OK... You had to read every line of her email to do your job.

Hmmmm....




Mr Mephisto

arch13

Lets try to keep this disscusion civil shall we?
We are alll adults here (or should be).

The lesson is to never expect privacy at the office.Ever . Pwehaps he shouldn't have read the email. he could have read the opening sentance, realized it was a personal use of company resources, and moved that and any other personal emails to the trash, never to be sent.
That's a fine solution in my book.

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Mephisto2

I couldn't agree more. Name calling is for children.

:-)

Mr Mephisto