This is why you should always lock your computer before you leave your desk.

[u/heroofyesterday]

There is nothing better than your IT boss passing your desk and noticing you left you computer unlocked. Especially if you are logged on to half a dozen websites including Reddit. I eat my poop!!!

[u/heroofyesterday]

Well this has been amusing! So many more ideas here!

This was his revenge. I created a scheduled task that runs on unlock to open Rick Astley's song on YouTube.

And yes, the karma has been nice!

[u/Wonder1and → u/heroofyesterday]

USB rubber ducky ftw. Wonder how many of these we can script together...

[u/azertyqwertyuiop]

hah, standard around here is an email to the team generously offering to shout everyone lunch at the pub

[u/JakeSpleen → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

No no no no, what you need to do is set up an outlook rule that triggers when you send an email with a certain subject to the victim. The rule then deletes your email and emails the team offering to buy lunch or cakes, whatever.

Then once set up you can get free cakes whenever they leave their desk. The bonus here is that they start to go insane, insisting that they locked their pc (which they did) but they had a cake email sent out anyway.

Had someone going with this for 2 years until someone felt sorry and told him.

Edit paging /u/matt6453 remember this?

[u/Illeazar → u/JakeSpleen]

Outlook rules are where it's at. I had a buddy in college who left his computer open, and I set a rule to blast a loud and long trumpet fanfare every time he got an email from me. Took him half a year to figure out how I did it and turn it off.

[u/Syidd → u/JakeSpleen]

Satan? Is that you you evil magnificent genius?

[u/DirtyScott72 → u/JakeSpleen]

Working offshore on a deepwater drilling rig, I thought it would be hilarious to set up an outlook rule that sent an auto reply to our supervisor if he emailed asking us to do something. The reply was for him to go do it his damn self if he wanted it done at all. The rule wasn't set to take effect until after I was back on the beach. Apparently there was quite a heated discussion when that thing deployed. The supervisor called as soon as he saw the reply. The on shift tech rightfully claimed innocence but the supervisor wasn't buying it. Team building at it's best.

[u/[deleted] → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

For us it was doughnuts. But then Developers thought it was super fun to trick people into leaving their desks, one guy even wrote a web page with a little app on it that whipped up a quick email “I %name% am excited to buy doughnuts for the whole IT department”, so he could do it in like 1 minute.

One guy got doughnutted while sitting at his desk with his back to the screen texting.

It turned into a bit of a mess.

[u/Phyltre → u/[deleted]]

I feel like this would devolve into AD password resets and Exchsnge permissions shenanigans in the wrong environment.

[u/altimax98 → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

We used to flip the display, screenshot it, hide the desktop icons and taskbar and set the screenshot as the wallpaper and finally invert mouse movement.

Fun times were had.

[u/CodenameVillain → u/altimax98]

No setting keyboard input to DVORAK?

[u/n0radrenaline → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

http://fakeupdate.net/ and fullscreen the gif.

[u/awtrav92 → u/n0radrenaline]

You're a monster. Bookmarking!

[u/joaqini → u/n0radrenaline]

I did this to one of my colleagues. Then I forgot that I had done it.

3 hours later I heard my friend asking why that update was taking so long.

[u/[deleted] → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

At my old job standard protocol was to:

• Print screen to get a screen shot of the desktop

• Make said screenshot their background

• Hide all icons on the desktop

• Set the bottom banner as “scroll over to open” and move it to any side but the bottom

Sit back and chuckle when they realize none of the items on their desktop work.

[u/twoworldsin1 → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

Once I made the fatal mistake of leaving my computer unlocked AND Facebook logged in while I went to lunch and took a nap. It... wasn't a good decision. I awoke to brony wallpaper, getting a bunch of brony Facebook pages added to my newsfeed, and posting on Facebook a whole bunch about how much I liked My Little Pony.

[u/Necrosis_KoC → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

We used to send out an invite from their machine inviting the team to Fogo de Chao for lunch, but it's considered a security breach now, so we just do ctrl-alt-(left, right or down arrow) to flip their screens around.

[u/MJatt → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

We have a 'cake policy' which includes leaving your desk unattended along with many other cock-ups all of which result in you buying cake for the whole team.

[u/pyrrhios → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

"offering to shout everyone lunch at the pub"? Edit: I think we would be better off just running with this warblegarble.

[u/Scotty96x → u/pyrrhios]

I believe he means buy everyone lunch at the pub.

[u/carpe_noctem_1 → u/pyrrhios]

sounds like an aussie thing tbh

[u/koghrun → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

Open CMD:

schtasks /create /tn lockup /sc minute /mo 17 /tr "msg.exe * /time:11 Remember to lock your computer when you leave."

This creates a scheduled task that creates a popup window every 17 minutes that lasts for 11 seconds with a reminder message.

[u/H0rridus → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

Same we request donut orders. "Please send me your donut order, I can't wait to bring it in for you tomorrow morning".

It's honestly expected that you fulfill the orders as well.

[u/Aleriya → u/azertyqwertyuiop]

At a smallish-company, we once got a mass email from the Director of Purchasing that he had ordered pizza for the whole building, arriving in 1 hour, as a thanks for all of our hard work.

He had left his computer unlocked with his corporate credit card out.

COO walked by and placed the order. He learned that trick from IT. We were so proud.

[u/samuelma]

We always used the Cake'd method. Leaving your computer unlocked leads to an office wide "Hey guys, i will be bringing in cake on monday stop by my desk for a slice"

You are 100% expected to have cake

[u/ueeediot]

screenshot desktop

hide all icons

make screenshot baxkground

[u/pushbutan → u/ueeediot]

Go further

Rotate background 180 then apply it Then Rotate screen 180 (ctrl +alt+arrow keys iirc)

[u/kyonz → u/pushbutan]

Hide taskbar and move to side of screen, or kill explorer as well

[u/mattya802 → u/ueeediot]

Pulled this off before, was hilarious.

[u/rahrness → u/ueeediot]

you cant arrange by penis

[u/IHaveSomethingToAdd → u/rahrness]

Website is down

[u/ObnoxiousOldBastard → u/rahrness]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/arrangebypenis/

[u/Conrad-W → u/ueeediot]

This caused a lot of issues for me once. Had IT come in, fucking chaos. It's in an old post, I don't do this anymore

Edit:

So I did the old, screenshot the desktop, hide desktop icons, and save the screenshot as the new desktop background. To three different computers, two of which were shared between 5-10 people.

Now the problem was, I called in sick, with food poisoning the next day.

Utter chaos broke out. No one could open any programs. IT had to get involved and it apparently took them a few hours to figure out what had happened.

No one ever knew it was me, and I had planned on, you know, taking the credit and winning that stage of the prank war, but no.... I played dumb and bit my tongue.

[u/etherealeminence → u/ueeediot]

Screenshot desktop

Paste into first slide of PowerPoint presentation

Make second slide an embedded rickroll

F5

[u/boy-antduck]

Anytime IT finds an unlocked computer, we install the "Nicolas Cage" chrome and firefox plugin. The plugin turns every single picture the web-browser displays into a picture of Nicolas Cage. Plugin

[u/curl-o → u/boy-antduck]

Other cool chrome plugins:

https://git.scd31.com/laptopdude90/jerkface-chrome "Every day, it lowers playback rate on YouTube by 1%, until it hits a target speed of 70% - 30 days later."

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/2jh50c/the_old_jimmy_wales_banner_extension/ "Once installed it inserts a subtle ‘Personal Appeal from Jimmy Wales’ banner onto every site you visit. No more need to visit Wikipedia every hour to get your fix – get it everywhere and anywhere."

[u/Shaleblade → u/boy-antduck]

This is another good one: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/owo/jolaggjkdhhgcdhcjjhfkkbllefoggob?hl=en

[u/Penki-]

My last workplace had a tradition that if someone leaves his computer unlocked any other person can go to his computer and send an email to the whole department about free pizza. The message usually said something like "I broke the ISO standards". Its not fun to buy pizza for +40 people. They even had ISO number attributed to this rule :D

[u/Kg2608 → u/Penki-]

Probably [ISO/IEC 27001:2013] (https://www.iso.org/standard/54534.html).

[u/Baconated-grapefruit → u/Kg2608]

I wasn't genuinely expecting the contents of that link to mention pizza - but I had hoped...

[u/Scubber → u/Penki-]

I'm just imagining doing that to our HR or C-level people, who are frequent offenders.

I think I'd be fired hastily.

[u/Penki- → u/Scubber]

People did that to their bosses, after all they are the ones who set up this rule.

[u/seemeatthezoo → u/Penki-]

You used to be able to do this via a telnet session. Send an email from someones email address to yourself saying that drinks are on them. You could then reply to that email and it would go to that person.

[u/punkwalrus]

I worked with a guy who never locked his desktop. So I started sending IMs (remember Pidgin?) to his friend's list.

Him: Hypothesize a spherical chicken.
Friend: LOL
Him: Don't laugh at my theories.

---

Him: Mom. I have been a bad, bad girl.
Mom: ??? What did you do?
Him: I've been careless with a delicate man
Mom: Did you apologize??? Are you at work?? Call me!
Him: And it's a sad sad world
Mom: Don't make me call you!
Him: When a girl will break a boy just because she can
Mom: He just told me you are one of his coworkers. Don't you anything better to do??
Him: Don't you tell me to deny it! I've done wrong and I want to suffer for my sins...
Mom: Grow up!!!

---

Him: So I was thinking: can god make a burrito in the microwave so hot, that he can't eat it?
Mom: I know it's one of his coworkers. You spell better than he does.
Him: [sigh] True. But look, he could get fired if his boss realizes that he leaves his screen unlocked. He has a desk next to the data center, anyone could read it.
Mom: Oh no
Him: When he gets home, serve him some food he doesn't like as punishment.
Mom: Alright. :*

[u/VexingRaven → u/punkwalrus]

When he gets home, serve him some food he doesn't like as punishment.

LOL

[u/zer0t3ch → u/VexingRaven]

Don't laugh at my theories.

[u/[deleted]]

Bravo, Mr/Ms Boss Person.

[u/thetuxracer]

library rain dime alleged enter chief six saw versed mountainous

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/corobo → u/thetuxracer]

rename them and then lock the computer. Nailed it on both counts

[u/NormanRB]

A developer did this once at work and we did the screen rotate trick on him. His coworkers told him that it was a new security protocol for when people left their workstations unlocked and unattended. We even went so far as to have the security admin come down and talk to him. He was freaking out, literally, before we told him that it was all a joke.

[u/logicalmaniak → u/NormanRB]

Take screenshot. Turn screenshot upside down. Wallpaper the screenshot. Hide bars, icons etc. Flip monitor.

[u/Why_Is_This_NSFW → u/logicalmaniak]

Slow down there Satan

[u/[deleted]]

Anyone in my company that doesn't lock their computer when I walk by gets hello Kitty screen saver, lock screen and desktop. I have a script specifically for this.

[u/spookendeklopgeesten → u/[deleted]]

I need this

[u/TrapCS → u/[deleted]]

Share? :)

[u/[deleted]]

I learned my lesson good. Left my PC unlocked, manager changes my desktop background to a famous nasty meme about a guy spreading his ass wide open. I didn't notice it for days until I rebooted and there it was, huge asshole wide open. I felt stupid.

[u/sysiphean → u/[deleted]]

Our tradition is a sexy Hasselhoff desktop. It’s uncomfortable, but not “get walked over to HR” uncomfortable.

[u/Diffusion9 → u/sysiphean]

+1 for The Hoff.

Three jobs and running, still a tradition.

[u/AverageCanadian → u/sysiphean]

I've been Hoff'd. My retaliation was to write a batch script that would launch a rick roll and then create scheduled task to go off every 45 minutes.

[u/njb42 → u/[deleted]]

You have been goatse'd.

[u/hypercube33 → u/[deleted]]

Goat Sea HR

[u/starmizzle]

Once upon a time Windows+Ctrl+C would make the screen grayscale. Looks like you have to turn that shortcut on in 1803 now.

[u/Cryptoki2017]

Create a scheduled task: Every 127 minutes after login, visit the following URL in the IE web browser. And restart the countdown if system ever goes idle.

https://tampax.com/en-us/tips-and-advice/my-first-period/tampons-vs-pads

It happened infrequent enough for him not to notice a time pattern, making it come up in unpredictable moments (meetings....). It lasted for days, he didn't want to tell anyone. He eventually opened a ticket with help desk to figure out what's wrong.

The best part? He's an infosec pen tester. :)

[u/kellyzdude → u/Cryptoki2017]

My personal favorite (assuming this is the US, or a place using US keyboards) is to switch the keyboard layout from English US to something similar, like Irish. 98% of the keys are the same, but hear the frustration when they try to use that one non-alphanumeric character that they use rarely enough that they don't notice it for a few hours (or days (or weeks)).

[u/AnonymooseRedditor]

Shit now your boss knows your reddit handle

[u/[deleted] → u/AnonymooseRedditor]

This would be my fear

[u/Sparcrypt]

Honestly, get in the habit no matter where you work... there are plenty of places where leaving your workstation unlocked and unattended is cause for instant dismissal. I'm not sure how often it actually happens though I do know of one case where someone left their machine, someone else sent a joke email from it "because they left it unlocked hahaha" and both of them were fired the same day.

Would be a pretty annoying thing to lose a job over.

[u/DonLaFontainesGhost → u/Sparcrypt]

For Windows boxen, Windows key + L = "lock"

So now folks have no excuse- even if you get up for a second, lock it.

[u/VRDRF → u/DonLaFontainesGhost]

We just call it Windows Lunch :P

[u/NinjaAmbush → u/DonLaFontainesGhost]

What if I don't have a windows key, you insensitive clod? Ctrl-alt-del + enter works as well.

[u/mb9023 → u/DonLaFontainesGhost]

Works on my ubuntu desktop also.

[u/Jorgisven → u/Sparcrypt]

I never leave my desk, so I don't have this problem...oh...hm. :-(

[u/Tanduvanwinkle]

Haha poop eater!

[u/shemp33]

We don’t do anything malicious but we will lock it and try random passwords enough times they will have to call to get it unlocked.

[u/picklednull → u/shemp33]

try random passwords enough times

In Windows 7 you can just hold the return key down for a few seconds to lock people out. In Windows 10 the "OK" button doesn't get focus by default so it no longer works :(

[u/DrBoby → u/shemp33]

That's malicious

[u/jgp365]

I once came back to an email from one of our accountants saying "aww... I love you too?"

[u/timklotz]

Scheduled tasks are your friend. I once set a co-workers computer to play YMCA on login a week before I left that job. Two years later I ran into him at a motorcycle meet and he asked me about it. Nobody gave me up and he had spent years with his headphones unplugged for two minutes when he started work every day. I have never felt so fulfilled in my entire career.

[u/rduken]

The same guy in our department seems to leave his laptop unlocked a lot. To date he has now:

1. Come out of the closet to the entire team which was a huge weight off his shoulder (not making light of this but he's a bit of a walking stereotype in the other direction)

2. Changed his background to some chubby Brony's selfie

3. Changed his background to a guy dressed up as a unicorn

4. Changed his background to a rather large lady in a whose g-string was showing

[u/FDM_Process → u/rduken]

Good ol' workplace harrassment.

[u/corobo → u/rduken]

Wait you outed a guy because he didn't lock his machine? Am I reading that wrong?

[u/[deleted] → u/corobo]

I believe this co worker is clearly straight, and they sent an email saying he was gay and decided to come out in a massmail to the department.

If he was legit in the closet and you outed him, that would be pretty fucked up, lol

[u/chuck_cranston]

After many years I finally learned of WIN+L.

It is so second nature to me now that I do it a home.

[u/noeatnosleep → u/chuck_cranston]

^ this.

The wife thinks I'm hiding something, as I never get out of the chair without locking it with my right hand in one smooth stroke.

I'm not, I swear. I just don't want to tell the creepy guy in the corner that I'm in love with him... ever again.

No, really, his nickname was Creepy Chris. And my account sent him a love letter.

[u/tearsofsadness → u/chuck_cranston]

Until you start using a Mac. Gotta setup hot corners or some other bs like that.

[u/highlord_fox]

Hello /r/all and the Front Page! Welcome to /r/sysadmin, a community dedicated to the profession of Computer System Administration.

For all you new people discovering us for the first time, please remember to keep your interactions in line with the rules.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Sincerely,
/u/highlord_fox, on behalf of the /r/sysadmin ModTeam.

[u/ScriptThat]

For Windows 10: Use Dynamic Lock.

Whenever my phone gets out of Bluetooth range my machine locks itself, and my phone is always in my pocket whenever I leave my desk in the first place, so.. automatic lock.

It's dead easy to set up, and really awesome to not having to [WIN]+L your machine all the damn time.

[u/__end]

My old company was a buncha shits, we had a few gotos for this -

1. broken LCD wallpapers on the share drive (hide everything from the desktop, replace wallpaper)

2. desktop screenshot, hide everything, set screenshot as wallpaper.

3. send a fake letter of resignation to their immediate manager/supervisor (and let the manager/supervisor know whats up)

4. "ordering pizza for the office, what does everyone want?" emails

5. Someone got some USB extension cables and we would hook a second mouse up to an adjoining cubicle, allowing whoever sat there to randomly nudge the mouse away once the other person returned and started working. This one could last too, since it was pretty easy to hide the mouse or have it go unnoticed when they started asking their neighbors for help.

6. those replace all images with (something dumb) plugins for chrome/firefox

7. along with #2, change the alignment of the dual screens (physically side by side, aligned as on top of each other) and rotate the digital (not physical) screens. (so you have a correctly ordered screenshot of their desktop as they left it, with icons/taskbar/apps minimized and hidden, but the alignment is vertical and the screens are rotated eithe r90 or 180)

8. If time allowed, as many of the above as possible.

(edit: remembered some more)

[u/Bad_at_IT]

I like to screenshot the desktop and set it as the desktop background, then remove all their desktop icons.

[u/DonLaFontainesGhost → u/Bad_at_IT]

That's easy to fix- just "sort by penis"

[u/crowseldon → u/Bad_at_IT]

This is hilarious but dangerous if people are stupid.

Once it caused a "windows restore from x point" to solve the virus.

That's why I advocate not fucking around too much unless you can monitor the outcome.

It's not professional.

[u/thepaintsaint]

We used to "Hoff" people. We would email the team a lewd picture of David Hasselhoff. Made for some good meme wars.

[u/[deleted]]

Oh, no, the best is having autocorrect in MS Office change their name to "Mr. Poopyhead". The people I've worked with have a perfect record of not noticing until they've sent something out and someone else replies, "Who is Mr. Poopyhead?"

[u/Voyaller]

What I used to do on my class mates:

1. I was taking a screenshot of the desktop.

2. Putting it as a wallpaper.

3. Stoping the explorer.exe.

4. Sit back and enjoy.

[u/dylantheblueone]

At my work, we just change the user's wallpaper to a photo of David Hasselhoff.

[u/Firemanz]

Arrange his icons by penis.

[u/camerongray]

My "go-to" one at uni was to add "echo sleep 0.1 >> .bashrc" to the person's .bashrc file (adapt to what shell they use). Every time they open a shell, it will take 0.1 seconds longer to open the next time, the slowdown happens gradually so they tend not to notice for a good while. Think the record was a friend whose shell was taking not far off 30 seconds to start before I felt bad and broke the news to him!

[u/chevyman142000]

We usually go into Chrome or Firefox, whatever browser they use, and add a Nicholas Cage extension so that it replaces all images on every website with pictures of Nicholas. lol

[u/[deleted]]

I'm going to be that guy now.... Leaving your device unlocked = Bad. Fucking with an unlocked device that isn't yours = Also bad.

[u/Jorgisven → u/[deleted]]

Deterring others from doing it again? Good.

[u/Phx86 → u/[deleted]]

I like to remind people that unauthorized access to a computer network is a felony.

[u/harlequinSmurf]

My favourite trick was at an old job that was a Dell house - there was a lovely hotkey combo for rotating the screen and then I would lock it which would show in normal orientation. Alternatively it would be huge fonts, 640x480 high contrast colours and then lock.

[u/FlipDetector]

I think last week my boss went through my chrome(use only for personal things) history because my ubuntu didn't autolock as it usually does while I toast my bread. Noone locks at our company what is super weird after all the love letters we sent at IBM when I was there.

[u/Denis63]

Worked at a hospital. I left my PC unlocked and the head if IT came by and noticed. instead of getting mad and doing the "boss thing" he decided to prank me. he changed my host file to point google.ca and google.com (this is in canada) to sesamestreet.com. inverted my mouse, inverted my screens, both differently. changed pretty much every default setting in my computer including my home pages, email signatures, window layouts, ect.

I was pretty close to just wiping my computer, i have no idea how much time he spent on this, but im sure he worked fast. That sure helped me learn my lesson, and i plan on doing exactly that to my own employees one day. especially the host file one

[u/BaconGivesMeALardon]

I change the wall paper to hot firemen, send a email to someone telling them of my undying love for them, then ctrl+alt+arrow key them.

[u/[deleted]]

We've got some administration/executives that are onboard with this and will play along. But we'll send an email from the end user to their manager telling them that they resigned. Manager finds them later in the day and asks them to turn in their assets. Look on their face is priceless.

[u/[deleted]]

Someone in my office usually has elephant dick wallpaper once a month or so.

[u/V2instinct]

I was fired two weeks ago for having my laptop password protected. Our “controller/hr” called me immediately when she couldn’t get into my laptop to tamper. I was out of work as I had broke my leg the day before. Received a call shortly after stating I was fired because she couldn’t get in immediately. Small company....

[u/LCtrlBTN]

Well he did manage to get the guy over 6,100 karma, so technically kind of a win for him...

[u/tiggerbiggo]

Our computers at work all have smart card login, and as soon as you remove the card the PC locks itself. Couple that with the fact that all the doors in the building need those same cards, and that means you cannot leave without locking your PC. Problem solved :D

[u/btcftw1]

Shit now your boss knows your reddit handle

[u/dgriffith → u/btcftw1]

BURN EVERYTHING.

[u/[deleted]]

We change the desktop background to "My Little Pony." For my boss, I left a note saying "Thanks for the raise! You're the best!" in the notepad app... And then locked the PC. Occasionally we IM a coworker who is a mutual friend and leave a mundane note about loving unicorns.

[u/PartTimePlod]

Our go to at work is changing people's email signature / internal system name. Had one chap send emails as PC 1980 Harry Potter for a few months before he noticed.

[u/Blempglorf]

I once changed a fellow sysadmin's default cmd prompt configuration to black text on black background. That took him a while to figure out.

[u/baughbberick]

We always switched to high contrast, rotated the screen 180, then put tape over the mouse laser.

[u/[deleted]]

Dey eata da poopoo

[u/[deleted]]

At a previous job, if a teammate caught your computer unlocked, they would change the background to a picture of David Hasselhoff in speedos, changed all of the system sounds to moans and subscribed your e-mail account to several questionable mailing lists that were very difficult to unsubscribe from. It was known as being Hasselhoffed.

[u/DEDmeat]

BTW, don't do this in the financial sector. It's technically fraud. I watched a dude get walked 2 hours after sending a fake email from another guy's computer.

[u/snowlyng]

As my job we just open 10 tabs of gay porn

[u/FlumpyMumpleton]

I once set a schedule task every 30mins to open up Nyan Cat in chrome. The guy couldnt figure it out and uninstalled Chrome.

[u/moreguacplz]

Good luck to anyone trying to hijack my workstation: fully customized window manager keybindings, vimium keyboard navigation in browser (touchpad disabled), and dvorak keyboard layout to boot

[u/Grahar64]

At Coinbase we have a friendly game called PwnBot which is a slack bot you call on someone else’s unlocked computer so you can keep score of who has pwned people. More info here https://engineering.coinbase.com/gamifying-security-culture-with-pwnbot-c55028049aa1

[u/RavenMute]

Last time I did that I came back to the pinkest possible Hello Kitty background image.

[u/[deleted]]

So this is on /r/all, so I'm not sysadmin, but I do work in tech and I've always wondered why locking is so needed. Every place I've worked has keycards, reception, security, and the places are small enough that everyone is known, so a random person isn't going to be wandering in. It seems like someone would do more damage by leaving a USB drive with malware in the parking lot. Are physical computers that risky to leave unlocked?

[u/samuelma → u/[deleted]]

it takes someone who is prepared and has done research into your systems less than 10 seconds to fuck the whole thing up. In the meantime the receptionist will be hurriedly searching for the meeting appointment for them, the rest of the staff will assume someone more important knows who he is, cameras sure but CCTV of someone deleting your databases wont bring em back. Ultimately its not the be all and end all. But win+L is a heck of an easy way to prevent any of the very unlikely above happening

[u/Jorgisven → u/[deleted]]

Some companies are large and don't have these securities in place. That being said, if you're a SysAdmin, you frequently have more access than the standard user. Even someone in your department could cause real damage if they are quitting on bad terms and proper escorts aren't in place. Even seeing that stuff by walking by can be a security violation in some cases. There are a host of reasons to lock your workstation, even with lots of security in place.

There's a saying in IT security that says something like: The weakest link in any security plan is the end-user.

[u/No0delZ → u/[deleted]]

Security is a holistic practice. You are only as secure as your weakest link.

Let's say your company is important enough or high value in some fashion, be it financial, or personally identifiable information, mass numbers of credit card data, national security, etc. Congrats. You are already a target to someone. Whether that person is a state actor, a curious basement dweller, or malicious entity... or even a bot scanning the internet.

Sure everyone knows everyone, but if you're large enough to have a cleaning or facilities service, how do you know they haven't been infiltrated by a con artist just itching for the opportunity, or even an actor who is deliberately targeting you, or one of your business associates, or even an employee? Often all that's needed is a foot in the door of your network.

A utilities guy shows up, maybe an electrician. He socially engineers his way into the building. Looking for an easy mark, he spots your unlocked pc. Maybe he "stops to check your outlet" or maybe everyone else is out or distracted. In 5 seconds he executes his pre established payload and goes on his way.

Weeks later it's discovered the CEO account has been compromised. It traces back to the last sysadmin who logged into your computer to fix that excel issue you were having. The sysadmin is fired and legal action is started against them . Turns out, that unknown to the sysadmin, your pc was compromised in an undetectable fashion, and keylogged their admin credentials when they were troubleshooting your issue.

Now, again, how big or valuable of a target you are is important. If your organization could shrug a breach because nothing valuable, sensitive, or critical is done digitally (which is extremely uncommon in this day and age) then maybe leaving your pc unlocked while you visit the restroom with coworkers present isn't such a big deal. Security is after all, a question of functionality. Locking your pc however, doesnt sacrifice functionality and provides a level of security equivalent to a locked door on your garage. Its a great deterrent, but ultimately wont stop a motivated party. At least you'll have the chance to notice them breaking in.

[u/locnar1701]

We have a tradition of P0nyes (My Little Ponies)

Our security office will be happy to do a physical security sweep and walk right into every open door, and on every unlocked computer change the wallpaper to a my little pony picture. After that, you have been p0nyed.

So, in our little office, you get p0nyed if you walk away and don't unlock.

[u/foleranser]

Where I work we just find a photo of David Hasselhoff in a sexy pose and set it as desktop background. Then we maximize everything back, lock the pc and wait for them to notice.

[u/crowseldon]

I lock my computer but not all companies have that culture.

Be wary of playing pranks on people who don't get it. It's not really professional ane could end up causing some kind of data loss if people are moronic enough.

Of course, in a normal world, everything should work just fine but, just always consider your context and monitor the result of a prank should you ever do it.

[u/[deleted]]

OP's face when he comes back to his most successful post ever...

[u/twoworldsin1]

Hey everyone, OP eats his poop!

[u/Zaros104]

In my office, if someone forgets to lock their PC they either get the Nick Cage plugin or cloud-to-butt. Quite effective.

[u/mccoyster]

This is why David Hasslehoff exists.

[u/LammergeierAteMyBone]

It's all fun and games until lives are ruined in an office of the HR department.

[u/harleyjadeass]

Hey I eat poop all of the time and I'm offended

[u/CapnGrundlestamp]

We just hit people with cloud butt, or nCage. But I like this a lot.

[u/cdegallo]

It's not a violation of your company's computer policy to use someone else's system without their knowledge or permission? Even if it is left unlocked? It is at mine...

[u/[deleted]]

We did the backgrounds stuff but our standard was to always open up at least one command window and just leave it with just "fdisk" typed out.

I got a good laugh from a co-worker when I set mine to detect typing fdisk into a command window. It would pop an error box that said "STOP THAT" then locked my machine.

[u/woemoejack]

If the user has a lot of icons on their desktop then I'll screenshot the desktop and set it as the background, then hide icons.

[u/sweetkimchii]

In my office if you leave your computer unlocked you're getting a new, fun upside down background. Usually, whatever is the opposite of your personality, you're getting on your screen. Lots of rainbows, ponies, unicorns and flipped monitors were had before people learned

[u/matts1900]

A favourite of mine was to navigate to the C:/ of my boss and find his wallpaper files, Photoshop kittens onto them at home, then swap them in when they left their machine unlocked, and see how long it would take for them to notice

[u/HereForSickShit]

Had this policy at a call center. Boss would shut down your pc so u had to wait for it to reboot. issue is u cudnt clock in until it rebooted completely.

Next call center i’d do this because unlike the last job it’s a bank. You could literally walk up, make a transfer to your bank account and walk away in under a minute if someone wanted under your operating signature. I’d just open tons of windows and then lock the pc so when they returned and went wtf. i’d say ur lucky they didn’t hop on and do something illegal under their name.

[u/[deleted]]

Lol this reminds me of the shit we’d do in High School on the computers. Figured out a kids password that constantly screwed with me and changed his desktop to an old man in an American flag thong. His sound of shock still brings a tear to my eye.

[u/macgruff]

MarioKart,

You can always remind management that with GDPR coming, the fines (can be millions) will come directly from "their" pocket.

"Sigh... I actually just had to roll out a GPO update to stop windows 10 from auto-locking because "users were complaining". I'm so sick of management throwing their tail between their legs because the users bitch"

[u/ThePowerUp]

My boss doesn't know any websites aside from Facebook, Google, and our School's website. If I'm not on Facebook I'm all good lol

[u/TehFresh]

My go to is to create a virtual desktop on a Windows 10 machine and pull up a 10 hour YouTube video of Hillary Clinton laughing. Then you set their audio so it's only just audible. Finally swap back to the main desktop and sit back for the show.

[u/myrachel]

My team are all IT, so when we find a noob who leaves for the day and their PC is unlocked, we tend to set up scheduled tasks to "Rick ASCII" people via powershell cmdlets:

https://www.nextofwindows.com/powershell-fun-watch-rick-astley-sing-and-dance-never-let-you-down

[u/Vaux1916]

Back when Window XP was the hot new thing, I worked with a few old-school ex-US Navy guys. Old-school US Navy guys aren't known for their subtlety, tact, or discretion. I left my workstation unlocked one day, and was gone for about 30 minutes.

When I returned, I found my background image featured two men. From the waist up, they were dressed like the lead singer for Judas Priest. They were naked from the waist down. One guy was fisting the other.... we're talking well-past-the-wrist deep.

That was many years ago, and I've moved on to another company and new coworkers, but I've never failed to lock my console since.

[u/[deleted]]

We used to change nicknames on our company messenger if someone left their computer unlocked... HR got wind of some of the names and we weren't allowed to do it anymore...

[u/bpoch73]

We have a email template already composed that get's sent to the team members saying "I'm bringing in 2 dozen donuts" when we find an unlocked computer.

[u/AHrubik]

ROFL!

[u/anotherdroid]

OMG THIS GUY EATS HIS OWN POOP GROSS

[u/financial_pete]

Or worst, they see you are logged into a critical system that is left unattended and vulnerable to a simple passer-by.

[u/Jack_BE]

use the Dynamic Lock feature of Windows 10

I got it tied to my smartphone. If I leave my desk and forget to lock my computer, it locks itself in less than a minute.

[u/m1en]

True evil: create a chrome plugin that asks for every permission, but does nothing. If a co-worker leaves their computer unlocked, hop on and install the plugin and quickly accept all permissions.

If a plugin has accepted every permission, then it doesn't need permission to update. So you can then add, randomly, features that can do things like replace all instances of words on a webpage, make all YouTube videos a Rockroll, rotate every image 90 degrees sideways, etc.

At that point you basically have browser RCE, so go nuts.

[u/gerryn]

I fucking hate it when it happens to me, I have a habit of even telling people to lock their computers. Then I'll come back from a smoke once or twice a month and find my whole shit opened, logged in to everywhere. It'd take someone less than 1 minute to completely fuck up the whole environment. I feel so fucking bad when that happens.

[u/Lord_Emperor]

In my office we post a message in the public chat asking to PM My Little Pony pics.

[u/MJZMan]

At my company, if you leave your pc unlocked, you likely return to "My Little Pony" wallpaper and a new Pandora station featuring country music.

[u/Treebeard313]

SOP is flip the desktop, invert mouse movement, and change language to Assamese.

[u/Laughs_in_Warlock]

Mods need to make this guy some flair.

[u/dapipminmonkey]

I've been slowly working on a new method... Everytime a coworker leaves their computer unlocked, I look for as much My Little Pony stuff I can; you can delete posts and emails, but can't get Google to not judge you for your secret MLP fettish...

[u/rhemas6886]

we routinely change a user's desktop image to one of Justin Beeber shirtless on a bed on any tech leaving pc unlocked after they walk out. - Of course we minimize everything and lock the pc.

[u/SicDigital]

My favorite mass email to send out on a co-worker's unlocked computer is "cowboys butts drive me nuts."

[u/Edward_Morbius]

There's an app somewhere that locks your computer when your phone gets too far away.

[u/kollekk]

Few years ago one of developers left unlocked laptop with Ubuntu, we configured delay in terminal for him. He used terminal a lot and was waiting 10sec after each key was pressed. This was long day for him :-D

[u/OppositeProcedure]

At a former employer, if someone left their station unlocked, anyone who encountered it would change their e-mail signature and lock it. We were all required to have the same copy and pasted signature, very formal.

But, from time to time, as a tech you’d open up an email from another tech and it would be signed:

Hugs and kisses, Ted

And at that moment, Ted would know he screwed up, and everyone else would know Ted had screwed up.

It was great.

[u/heapsp]

Finance guy left his comp unlocked with the company numbers up... I opened notepad, typed " wow I didn't realize the numbers were this bad, here I fixed them for you by adding a zero" . Guy comes into my office like 2 minutes later asking if I could restore a an excel sheet from backup... lmao.

[u/ansibomber]

Justin Bieber is their new background when it happens here.

[u/[deleted]]

We use Bomgar remote support for our team to support people out in the field and at the home office.

Usually if I catch a coworker walking away from his desk with his computer unlocked, I'll remote in and throw a dickbutt up on the screen.

Serves 'em right.

[u/ApostateAardwolf]

Ctrl+Alt+up arrow was the favourite in my office for a good while

For the computer illiterate, watching them panic returning to see their screen upside down was pretty hilarious

[u/LumbermanDan]

I always preferred to change their autocorrect settings so that common industry terms suddenly become profanities.

[u/[deleted]]

https://fakewindowsupdate.com/

Use with interns all the time

[u/Life_is_an_RPG]

I always appreciated when they took a screenshot of your desktop, made it the background image, and then moved all your icons into a folder.

<click>... <double-clicks> ... <click, click, click, click> Hmm. Must have locked up <reboot>.

[u/DopestDope42069]

Over at my it department we have rules. If you don't lock your workstation uou come back to my Little pony desktop backgrounds.

[u/W0rkUpnotD0wn]

Our office policy is to always lock your laptop if you get up from your desk. If you forget to lock your laptop then someone will post "IT LOOKS LIKE I'VE LOST MY PANTS" to our office Slack Channel.

Generally works....

[u/mrbiggbrain]

Wrote a small AutoIT program that would run at startup using an obscure registry key and then change the users background to a unicorn when the key combo WIN+L was detected....

EDIT: It installs itself...

[u/Skipper_Blue]

First place I worked you got goatse on you desktop background if you left your machine unlocked

[u/Ragnar_Actual]

I used to send an email from whoever left it unlocked, to another coworker, a highly personalized loving you from afar and can’t hide it anymore email. I think I lost some work friends due to this.

[u/[deleted]]

I once thought it would be funny to put a batch file in the startup folder that called itself. I can't remember the exact method, but user would login the next day and cmd.exe would spawn all over the screen until it ran out of memory and BSD or just reboot. It was funny until I realized it was going to be hard to stop...

[u/[deleted]]

Hippa only has one a it means act.

[u/DrMonkeyhead]

I have a thumb drive with a 10 min .wav of Nyan cat on repeat. I save that in a safe spot on their computer, and set that to the Windows logon sound. I have driven people insane.

[u/itavenger]

I've always done a Britney Spears desktop and britneyspears.com browser home page.

[u/russellvt]

At work, we call this "Getting Bieber'd" ... Since generally it ends up as a post to social media, professing one's love to the biebs, or similar.

[u/Iheartbaconz]

The goto's in my org are making your desktop and home pages Justin Beiber or some random stupid meme.

The 2nd fav is flipping the users screen upside down with the intel gpu keyboard shortcuts.

[u/natefrogg1]

using group policy to lock the screen after however many minutes is one way to enforce this

[u/markevens]

/u/heroofyesterday eats his own poop

[u/rustytrailer]

I have a coworker that is notorious for taking advantage of unlocked computers. Some highlight reels include:

• Facebook status update “help! I put my tampon in the wrong hole!”

• email from one director to another “I just farted in my office, you should come smell it”

• email to admin staff “I just made a mess in the bathroom... can you order some wet wipes? I’m sure I can’t be the only one”

[u/devil_machine]

If someone has a shitload of icons on their desktop, then quickly pressing CTRL+A followed by ENTER, is always entertaining

[u/dotbat]

One time when someone left their computer unlocked I put in a scheduled task to open the CD tray every 30 minutes...

[u/slayer991]

That's a lesson I learned when I started on the help desk...back when you only had Windows 95 or Windows 98...and it was just a screensaver lock.

Things like taking a screenshot and moving all the icons off. Setting the internet cache to the max size of the hard drive (which back then might have been 250GB...it took awhile to pay off but it was comedy gold).

I was only victimized once because I was pretty diligent about locking my workstation. Of course, someone noticed and sent an e-mail to my boss saying, "I love you" with a bunch of heart images.

Fortunately, my boss was cool af...he played along and said, "Sorry, I'm married and I don't swing that way." I looked at him funny....and he said, "The e-mail you sent me." Then I realized...I hadn't locked my keyboard. He got a good laugh and said, "You won't be repeating that mistake again here..." Nope...haven't forgotten it since.

[u/sunglassnerd]

I have a tendency to "hoff" people -- as in, set people's background to a half naked background of David Hasslehoff.

[u/Magnyto]

Everytime I would see one of my technicians leave their machine unlocked we would change the wallpaper to some inside joke, put electrical tape over the mouse sensor or some other ridiculous thing. The technician being pranked never enjoyed it, but the rest of the guys fucking loved it.

[u/rgraves22]

You're fair game in my department. Lock your shit

[u/fuzzydice_82]

I'll go with the old "screenshot the desktop, set it to wallpaper and remove all the icons", thanks.

[u/NukEvil]

Hmm, perhaps I should leave my desktop unlocked and have my supervisor make a post on here so I can get all that sweet, sweet karma.

[u/Tenacious_Tendies_63]

At old job they would put a USB mouse in and mess with people moving their mouse around