Porn on computer- what am i supposed to do?

[Budd]

what am i supposed to tell people? i just finished a computer from a doctors office that was loaded with porn dialers that were interfering with the normal internet dialer. the machine was the doctors personal machine that they moved to the office to some billing on. now i haven't spoken to the doctor. i don't know if he even knows the machine is here in the shop, the receptioninst brought the machine in. when she asks what the problem was, what do i say? do i tell her about the porn? or do i make something up? basically i just want to cover my own ***, make sure something can't come back and bite me

[Stalemate]

Who owns the machine?

Only the owner should know the "official" reason.

I would simply tell the receptionist that automated dialers had taken over some normal features of Windows, without going into detail.

I don't condone the activity, but this is "need to know", isn't it?

[blink]

tough call to make.i think the doc may have ok'ed the repair but thought or didn't think nothing of it.nurses or aides usually just don't remove a /the pc without bosses approval.might be safe not to say anything about theporn

[Budd]

Originally posted by a d e p t

I don't condone the activity, but this is "need to know", isn't it?

yeah, it is "need to know", i just want to make sure that i'm covered. like say i missed something some how, missed a dialer or something. i just don't them coming back on me. or if it was someone else that put the dialers on, someone from the office, i think they should know about that don't you?

[Stalemate]

Originally posted by Buddy Holly
... if it was someone else that put the dialers on, someone from the office, i think they should know about that don't you?

That's why I'd tell the owner in person, if possible, or directly by phone what the source of the problem was and maybe give him some tips on how, either, to secure the PC or treat it as an office tool from now on.

Sucks to be you right now. It's never an easy thing to deal with.

[Poseidon]

Just tell her you removed an excess number of "non-{insert company name} related" files and leave it at that.

Then you could recommend Ad-Aware or Spybot and perhaps she will ask you to perform the installation resulting in more business.

I used those exact words on an invoice to one of my good customers just the other day.

[Gabriel]

Hi,
IMHO this is non of your bussiness what this Doc is doing on the personal computer.
I would do nothing until asked to. Porn is still legal (not KID, animals or Bin laden kind porn though).
Hey - as far as you know it is just a crush anatomy course


all well,
Gabriel

[NooNoo]

Porn and spyware share the same roots - just tell her that the machine was loaded with spyware and tell the Doc to use spybot's excellent immunize feature.

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by a d e p t
That's why I'd tell the owner in person, if possible, or directly by phone what the source of the problem was and maybe give him some tips on how, either, to secure the PC or treat it as an office tool from now on.

Sucks to be you right now. It's never an easy thing to deal with.

All are good suggestions, but this here is your best advise. If you want to explain the exact problem to someone, the person that put this stuff on the PC knows it is there. Or maybe they don't, but they know who did (i.e. son, daughter, uptight wife). No one else should be privy to this information. I would also suggest to the owner that you would like to take a fine tooth come and clean out all of the unmentionables, since this PC is going to go in the office, perhaps used by someone besides him. It might drum up some more service dollars!

[Sunshine]

I've seen some of those dialers installed in "drive bys". In those cases, the user doesn't even know the dialer is installed until there are troubles. Perhaps (some may consider this a stretch) the Doc didn't even know these items were on his PC.

Were there any viruses on his PC? I've also come across instances where the user's PC had back-door trojans that allowed others to use their PC as a storage device / gateway.

There are many possibilities to consider. I would bring it to the Doc's attention, in person, and watch his reaction. If he's been caught in a lie, you should be able to tell by watching him. I also agree that nobody else in the office needs to know what's on his PC. The company didn't pay for the unit, so the company doesn't need to know what a pervert (if he put that garbage on the PC) he is.

my .02

[supatech]

Just fix it charge her and call it good. Doesn't matter who put it on or why you job isnt' to worry about that. Just take care of the problem. It could have been anybody that had internet access on that machine.

[Shard92]

I agree with Sunshine, he may not even have known they were there ( rather likely in my opinion since he is now using for work ) and even if he did that's his business not yours. I like NooNoo's idea just say spyware or junkware had gotten installed on it. Tell them sometimes that stuff gets on without anyone even trying to install it.

[Budd]

well, the doctor himself picked the machine up this morning. he asked what was wrong and i told him, spyware and porn dialers. he looked genuinely surprised and said he would take care of it. if it was anyone else would have picked the machine up i would have just told them about the spyware

[Tacit_k]

We had an auto-dialer problem in my office. It was not hard to figure out what was going on. It seems the late night cleaning staff was using the computer to look at porn.

I was honest with the CEO about the problem but with everyone else I simply told them that

"the problem was cause by third party dialers that had been accidentally installed"

The explaination is honest without giving away too much information. the ceo, myself and the cleaning service manager had a meeting and I showed the documentation about when the computer was logged on and what sites were viewed. Unfortunately due to our internal security policy I am not abole to lock down this particular box so it does create a problem. The cleaners were reassigned and the new ones have not created a problem.

[Stalemate]

Good call, Buddy.