On one of my past places of work, Goating was compulsary if anyone left their computer unlocked. The pranks ranged from the ones mentioned in the blog here to much more creative things. The “desktop screenshot” is a good one, but in combination with switching the mouse buttons and setting the mouse speed to the lowest possible value makes it so much more ammusing.
Sending e-mails to managers are always fun. I once found myself having invited the finance director of the company to a movie and dinner… Funny thing about that one is that I’m married to her today, and that prank was what got us started speeking… So thank you to the one who pulled that one!
One of the more elaborate schemes was when I scripted one guys firefox to send him to www.string-emil.de each time he hit the A-key on his keyboard… oh, don’t go to that site if someone is watching… or if you are sensitive to middle aged, long haired men in skimpy underwear.
Why do you think you’d lock down a desktop and not let students change screen resolution? Oh, yes thats because the little darlings change screen resolutions to limits that the monitors don’t support. Very clever.
As far as locking screens go, there has been cases of Civil Servents in the UK being disciplined and fired for not locking their work stations - data protection issues mostly.
Our trick at College was to put a “logoff” in the users “logon” script. I did it to one guy who’d just gone to a printer, he went ballistic at the class joker. Felt immature and silly so wrote a small program that locked the screens, and then never did it again.
Oh, and a final note, in XP is it possible to unlock another users workstation (ie log them off) without being a member of the administrator group?
I’ve caught several people walking around that others have let in that weren’t there for espionage, but for a quick buck by stealing purses/wallets/laptops. We’ve had others that have not been caught until the police were called in to review tapes and track them down and still others that were never caught.
Several? -Even though your entrances are locked… ?
Well, what can I say… As far as I know, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen i Helsinki, which is nice.
For the record, I’d find “hoffing” funny too, but not a resignation e-mail sent in my name.
I usually play the nasty “animal sex goating” - no pun intended
Where I work, we have an internet filter like Websense, so when you try to access “unusual” sites your request is denied, logged and reported to the admins.
That’s why, when my coworkers leave the PC unlocked, I open Explorer and load animalsex.com … then I hit F5… 100 times…
I think something that a few of the people offended by the idea of “goating” are missing is that this is really done to people you get along with and that you know can take a joke. I wouldn’t do this to someone I don’t know or I know would get in a tizzy about it (like the 220 V keyboard guy or the shit on keyboard guy).
To A Schools Admin:
They lock down all sorts of stuff. It’s windows 2000 and windows xp computers. Since they disable the display control panel, there’s no way to change the screen resolution from the default (800x600) to the monitors’ native resolution, which is usually 1024x768 or 1280x1024. Fortunately, a few of the computers now have the Intel GMA driver installed, so we can change the resolution that way. They restrict just about everything - we can’t lock our workstations, either. Probably because they don’t want someone to lock one and leave it like that, but all the teachers are admins and could unlock them, or they could add the Force Logoff button to the computer locked dialog, since the Novell options allow that to be set.
A few more favorites, edit their wallpaper file and put an error dialog box right into the center, of course they can’t click it and get riled up because they can’t clear the “error”.
Decrease resolution to 640x480, increase fonts and icons to maximum - I actually did this to a guy that wore coke bottle glasses and he LOZVED it!
I used to have an executable file that just played a few gun shots, a fart, burp and a scream. Put it in the startup folder and turn their volume up as load as it will go without hissing, log off.
Goad \Goad\, v. t. [imp. p. p. {Goaded}; p. pr. vb. n. {Goading}.]
To prick; to drive with a goad; hence, to urge forward, or to
rouse by anything pungent, severe, irritating, or inflaming;
to stimulate.
[1913 Webster]
you should really have your computers locked when you’re not around. Are you sure that no one in your company dislikes you?
btw, how likely is anyone gonna be suspicious of a person wearing a Fedex/IBM shirt and wandering about in your office premises? Those are trustworthy companies.
Violence is your answer to a simple prank? You seem to have some anger problems. Not that I endorse all of the suggestions here, but a simple desktop change (not to porn) or a silly email sent to others is a harmless way to add a little embarrassment to the lapse of not locking a computer. Much more effective than just a note on the screen.
Personally, there’s very little someone could gain from accessing my computer with my account, other than the ability to use my email address. I’m even thinking of changing that by ditching Outlook and using the webmail. The only issue there is saving old email, since IT doesn’t like anyone storing email on the server for any period of time.
On the other hand, I still have my computer set to lock itself after a couple of minutes. The real issue I have is when someone uses my computer while I’m out of the office, with their own login/password, and manages to screw up the system by installing a virus or spyware, and I end up spending a day or two getting the system back into working order instead of doing any actual work.
You can use them even if the target computer is locked: just turn off the power, insert disk/CD and wait for the victim to boot up. Both are very NSFW so don’t just go and write the disk images on your boss’ hard drive…
