A stupid technician exposed to the key key to confidential information • Registration

On call Welcome once again the call, The registrationThe Friday column that celebrates its escapes from dangerous technical support applications.

This week, meeting a reader, will regomize as “Tom”, who told a story of his experience in the early 1980s as the type of technical support for which he is quite sure was the first Squadron of the Air Force to adopt PC.

“These were dual floppy computers (possible Tandy 1000s?) Executing Windows 1.0 or CP/m,” he said in Call.

The files written in one operating system could not be read when using the other. Therefore, the PC provider provided an application called “formats” that translated the files in a usable format for which users of the operating system decided to use.

The formats were a silly name for that utility, because the command FORMAT Delete the records.

“That ‘s’ extra caused many problems when people forgot to add it,” Tom on Call told Tom, because more than a few users tried to convert a file but ended up cleaning a disc.

The squad had data recovery tools, but required command line skills that few possessed.

Therefore, Tom was often called to recover data.

One of those calls came from a member of the Squadron legal team.

“An officer had tried to change CP/m files for format two and when the first album did not work, he thought he just needed to try again on several different albums.”

All those albums were now blank, and Tom was left alone to perform their data recovery duties.

At this point, Tom was very familiar with data recovery tools, but still verified that each work had worked by opening a couple of random files just to make sure they have achieved each data recovery mission.

When he did after this work, he was surprised.

“All were records of martial procedures of the Court,” he said in Call, and although the privacy rules were less fierce in those days, it seemed strange that he had allowed them to access them.

Worse, one of the files mentioned a chapter in the squad that Tom knew quite well.

“That was not exactly well known in the unit,” Tom in Call said.

“I quickly closed the files and let the staff know that the officer’s files were back. Talk about too much information!”

Has a technical support work led to inappropriate information? If so, what did you do? It is completely appropriate to send an email calling an email clicking here so we can share your dangerous data on the future Friday. ®