Office poltergeist - will I get fired?

[nel]

A friend sent me this link by email - http://officepoltergeist.com/

Now it sounds like a right hoot and I just imagine playing such tricks on a couple of colleagues. The question is, will I get fired for downloading the .exe and running it on a colleagues machine? Has onyone tried this and can testify that it's innocuous?

[john75]

sounds fun would love to see his or her face

[john_p]

Depends how uptight your IT department is! If you work at somewhere that has an IT policy I wouldn't recommend it

[gasblaster]

I wouldn't touch it at work. People have been fired for less. Anyway, it looks very similar to a program called someting like '7' which I think pretty much allowed a remote user to do the poltergeist stuff but also allowed them to see what was on the screens, etc.

[Jamassey]

The app was Sub Seven, used to be quite a big hacking tool.

[scorp]

Jamassey said:

The app was Sub Seven, used to be quite a big hacking tool.

Almost certainly a sackable offense to install that (or something similiar).

[vixpy1]

depends whether your IT department got laid over the weekend..

[t1grm]

If you work for a small company and know the guys in the IT dept then you will probably just get a slap on the wrist. If you work for a major multinational with a corporate IT and internet usage policy and a offshore helpdesk then I wouldn’t touch it.

[moleamol]

vixpy1 said:

depends whether your IT department got laid over the weekend..

And to be fair, they probably didn't.

[jitsukadave]

I can't get it to run here - the virus software stops it from looking like a proper application to run

[Yugguy]

we'd get utterly screwed if we tried to use this at work.

[nel]

OK guys, I got the message and won't touch it. Pity as it would make for good pranks I suspect.

A good computer prank that I did on an IT illiterate colleague's machine was to screen dump his wallpaper with icons in place, turn the bitmap through 180 degrees and make it his wallpaper. I then hid all his working icons. When he came back from lunch he called me over saying look at this - how can I work now? I said "Oh NT does this sometimes", picked his monitor up and put it on his desk upside down. I then sat at my desk trying not to giggle as a guy from the IT helpdesk came to sort him out.

This poltergeist thingy, if innocuous, could have made those boring days fun - I was already imagining making an uptight colleague's computer make farting noises at inappropriate moments...:-)