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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

Kinda weird line, to me. Curious if it was for connecting a third party USB drive at all, and if so, why mention the porn.

It seems like companies either have a strict USB policy, or don't. If they allow USB drives, it feels odd to me to fire someone over a drive containing porn. What if it was a genuine mistake of confusing two drives or something? Or a genuine drive that happened to just contain something copied by accident.

But if OP was say, copying, streaming, or uploading the files, then that seems like a more clear violation than what the article states.

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I have worked at (regulated) places that have a zero-tolerance policy for porn and work computers. Not Illegal, it's Violation of Corporate Policy; a fireable offense

Wonder how was their drug policy?

I can see some firms afraid of porn but distributing leaflets about safe fentanyl use, lol.

Lots of people drank at lunch, or late lunch. There was also a zero tolerance for (illegal) drugs; no testing. I saw people get terminated for porn, drugs (very obvious ), getting a (married) co-worker pregnant.

I saw a VP keep their job after a drunken accident at a corporate function where they broke their leg.

Yeah, you'd think if he had a legitimate need for USB storage then work would issue it to him right? And then in that case, if he was using a work USB storage device with his personal computer for personal data storage, then that's an issue in its own right, regardless of what the data is, but it seems it would be more straightforward to just say that.

You would think that, but it's rarely true. Getting issued a $10 USB drive could take a ton of paperwork and red tape, and eventually end with a "yeah that use case seems inconvenient but not worth us doing stuff". When you have one sitting on your desk or in your pocket already, that's a tempting one

Honestly in my experience every company I've worked at has had some kind of explicit cybersecurity policy or training telling us not to use USB drives, so from a CYA perspective I think I'd be very hesitant to plug one in to a work laptop at all. But I have only worked at massive corporations, so my experience is limited

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