When you work in IT and you have admin access, you need to be careful what you use it for because you could cause some problems.

What would you do if you were about to quit your job anyway, and you saw the opportunity to block some websites that were used by people you didn’t like?

That is what happened to the IT guy in this story, so he took the opportunity and only found out months later that the team was still complaining about not being able to go to those non-work related sites.

Before I quit my job back in August, I forgot I did something petty and net nanny’d the workstations

This just got brought up to me via text from one of my old coworkers and I had completely forgotten about it and thought I’d share it. For context, I live in the Midwest.

Cybersecurity is an important job.

I had a friend at my previous job, who worked in IT. He was head of Cybersecurity and licenses, while I was project manager for the site and ran the facilities.

He and I had to work hand in hand frequently, as we had government contracts and had to log in visitors and get them vetted sometimes, for a key fob to enter the facility.

Seems like a good system they had set up.

I would collect vendor information and pass it onto him, while he ran things and got permissions.

Sometimes, I was upgrading onsite systems or installing new equipment for monitoring things like the new solar panels and what not.

Makes sense.

This required me to install new programs to not only my computer but specific workstations as well.

Prior to this current job, I had worked for the government as a contractor and my top secret clearance was a good selling point for me with this company, as it meant the IT department could work with me on things and use my own contacts I’d also established.

I’m sure this all made the job easier.

I was also the IT Manager and understood the lingo and nomenclature, so needless to say, my friend and I worked well with each other.

Unlike any other IT department I’d worked with or companies I worked for, this job HATED I.T. and treated them like the red headed stepchild.

Some companies don’t see the benefit of technology.

IT hindered production and they hated all the rules and procedures that came from them. More like a burden, than preventive.

The company gave them the lowest miniscule budget I’d ever seen and never took any of what they said seriously. They overworked them and made them come in on weekends or stay late, citing “that’s why they’re salary.”

Working together can really help.

I sympathized with them and tried my best to help or do the work for them, to take things off their plate.

New Access Point needed installed? No problem, I’ll use the scissors lift to do it. Need the Ethernet cable ran 100 yards from the roof to the hub? Sure why not.

Having admin access is good, but can also be dangerous.

The trust, my helping and knowledge lead to my friend giving me admin access, for me to install or debug programs for him while he was stuck in hours long training sessions or meetings.

The company wisely had certain workstations committed to one computer and if that crashed or acted up, it shut down production or the line.

A nice little work around.

It was just easier for me to enter in administrator credentials and reboot systems or troubleshoot, rather than wait for them to get done by IT.

My friend left for another job across the country and I honestly had forgotten that I had administrator credentials. I hadn’t honestly needed them for a while and I was busy with other things.

He seems like a very hard worker.

Because I was in charge of the facilities, I was generally the last one out every single day. The workers had a bad habit of leaving every light on and the owner of the company would get triggered by it.

It was just easier for me to stay 20 mins after the end of my shift and close up shop, after the stragglers or people finishing jobs. My last day wasn’t any different than normal but with one small difference… I heard voices this time while I was closing up.

That is weird.

I followed the source and one of the workstations was left unlocked and blaring on his webpage, Fox News on one page and Newsmax on the other.

Employees had been warned about this tons and the person who’s station I was at, was a bad person to me.

What does he have in mind.

An evil idea came over me and then I remembered that I had administrator credentials. I went to the web settings and started blocking those sites.

Out of curiosity, I went to another workstation and found their browsing history was the same. So, I proceeded to do the same thing.

Does this mean nobody will know it was him?

I continued to do this at every workstation throughout only one plant. Not only was it foolproof but the stations were unlocked by the username of the department it was at but also a blanket work password.

The administrator credentials were also a blanket username and password, not tied to anyone. Keycards were only logged in the system for INBOUND, not outbound.

He is protected.

It wasn’t unheard of for staff to still be there finishing things up, hence my staying late, so you couldn’t pinpoint who dun it.

The timestamp for admin access might give it away but there’s no cameras on the facility, IT is generally one of the last ones out as well. They could check the logs all they wanted, it was a different team than when my friend was there and they didn’t know I had admin access, even I forgot I did too.

So, who cares if he does get caught.

Plus I was quitting. Good luck proving it wasn’t one of you OR admitting there was a breach in security.

I honestly forgot about it until one of my the plant managers messaged me out of the blue today.

They should know this without calling a former employee.

We had a snow storm last night and the solar panels were acting up and they needed to know how to reboot them. I told him how cuz I was helping HIM, not the company.

So, we started catching up and I asked how the skeleton shift was working for them. He said fine but they’d been trying to fight a “glitch in the Matrix” for a few months now.

Oh, gee. I wonder why?

The weekend crew was hit with layoffs cuz of the winter and these tariffs. They’re running a crew of 3 on the weekends and they’ve been doing ok but their chief complaint is they can’t “use certain websites” for some reason.

Since IT was overworked and it was just the weekend shift complaining, it was deemed a low priority but apparently it’s starting to make more and more people mad and they’re now unintentionally throwing themselves under the bus if they’re complaining they can’t watch Fox News(etc) on shift INSTEAD of working.

Seems like a win win to me.

That is too funny. I can’t imagine complaining that a website not related to my job was blocked, but some people just have no shame I guess.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

Why do people care what is on a public TV?

That is just too funny. And helpful.

Good job!

Wow, they deserved to be fired.

You can block sites easily enough.

Stick to work related websites and you’ll be just fine.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.