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Comment by pram | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised it hasn't happened before. When I was in the air force, it was common practice to send out embarrassing emails if someone left their computer unlocked. They'd send them to the whole squadron or wing if they could.

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Same where I worked, doing that really got people in the large company learn to lock their screen real fast :)

Some of the emails were embarrassing and very funny.

Good culture to enforce security, no?

It happens at my workplace. If someone who has access to elevated privileges leaves their workstation unlocked and unattended, it's highly likely that a colleague will send an email to the team to embarrass them.

I've pointed out that this technically breaches company policy regarding use of someone else's user account/identity, but it falls on deaf ears.

Leaving your computer unlocked usually also breaks policy (except if the policy is very much useless). The non-embarassing way would be to report the user leaving the computer unlocked, leading to disciplinary action and eventual dismissal. I think something slightly embarassing is the kinder option here.

>Leaving your computer unlocked usually also breaks policy (except if the policy is very much useless).

Agreed. But at this point, only one person has breached policy and it's a forgetfulness/oversight kind of breach.

If someone actively takes control of the machine to send an email, that's a much more serious offence.

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