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Tech

The Most Revolting Things IT Technicians Have Discovered on Your Computer

IT technicians are basically our generation's gods.
Illustrations by Stephen Maurice Graham.

This article originally appeared on VICE Italy

IT technicians are basically our generation's gods. You might live 90 percent of your days online, yet as soon as one of your three devices breaks you are at the mercy of Ben from IT.

Ben, who you run to, broken phone in hand, manically deleting the stream of belfies you took last night, silently despairing at the thought that they might still live somewhere else on your phone or laptop. Ben, who has access to all your emails, and iChats and maybe soon your mind too. Ben, who sees everything but never speaks of it. Or, does he?

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We asked a few IT technicians we know to tell us about the most revolting things they've found in people's devices. Since stories about 60-year-olds being unable to plug in the monitor are not that funny, the following anecdotes focus on the more NSFW side of the game.

RISKY BUSINESS

One day a customer, who was a surgeon, asked us to replace his hard drive. I started to copy his files to an external storage to then pass them on the new HD and, among the many operating videos, I spotted some with a "dirty" preview. It wasn't just one or two clips: there was a whole collection of amateur sex stuff – some downloaded from the web, others shot by him and his wife.

After a few minutes the surgeon came back to the store with a colleague, wanting to show him footage from an operation, so I paused the copy and left them in front of the computer. After browsing through his folders he found the video and hit play, but he didn't notice it had moved to the "dirty" playlist I had just looked into. As soon as the first video finished, a video showing his wife fingering him begun to play.

We were four in that room, the two doctors, myself and a colleague of mine. A deep silence fell, as the surgeon went white, muttered something – then shut his laptop and ran outside the room. My colleague and I were left staring at each other in disbelief, while the other doctor stood there, with his mouth open and his hands on his cheeks.

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—Marco

THE DARK SIDE

One day the 20-something son of our boss came to our office. He was friendly and easy-going, and very kindly asked us to copy his files to an external storage and format his laptop. Even though we usually only work with our company's staff, we made an exception and I immediately started to work on his case.

Skimming through his files – which I had to do manually, according to his request – I found one titled "4ME". Thinking it was a residual of some programme, I opened it to check what was inside and possibly remove it. Instead, I found myself staring at a sort of journal of evil, a Word doc full of terrifying thoughts and details. I obviously showed it to my colleague immediately, and in a couple of minutes our whole desk was forwarding bits from the journal to each other. We just couldn't stop but the more we talked about it, the more terrified we got of the content.

There were dozens of pages of transgressions, curses and phantasies of harming friends and family. He wished they'd all die or get some terrible diseases – including their babies! When he came back to collect his laptop, no one spoke a word. I just gave him back his laptop, wishing that he go away as fast as possible.

—Andrea

WHOOPS

That job was a routine one, and the customer was a lady we had already worked for before. She came in at the scheduled time and left us with her laptop, asking us to check it and – if necessary – to update it. She left the laptop in its bag.

After completing some other work, I was ready to dedicate myself to her case. I opened the bag, took out the computer and grabbed for the charger. Instead, I grabbed something whose shape was clearly not that of a charger. It was a long, pleated cylinder.

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It was in fact a dildo, with a vibrating base, plus a little box of lubricant. When she came to pick up her laptop she didn't say anything – and neither did I, of course. But she has never come back since.

—Federico

WHOOPS/2

Once, while I was tearing open a PC to substitute a broken hard disk, I found the wrap of a condom inside. I have no idea how it got there but it was in fact responsible for the damage, as it slowed down the CPU fan causing the device to overheat.

—Andrea

HEAVY TRAFFIC

Tuesdays are the worst. I don't know why, but they always start badly. Once, we got a call from a health clinic because their entire network had gone down – from the medical machinery to the reservation system.

We tried to find out what had happened by logging in to the server rack, and we discovered that the internet was working, but the intranet was not. Once we'd verified the physical devices were working – if isolated from the intranet – we assumed that the problem was not in the structure, but in what was streaming in it.

Long story short, one of the practitioners working in the clinic had a habit of watching porn while on-call and had ended up downloading a bug that had infected 25 computers. When we confronted the doctor, he said: "I didn't mean to do it, the web is full of self-installing shit!" The thing is, that programme required manual installation.

—Filippo