need advice...

LegacyUser

I need some advice I found naked pictures of a fellow staff member on our server she must not know my document files upload to the server.

we have a file server for our office and all users my documents folders are backed up to the server most people are told this but probably don't grasp it fully, my boss couldn't find a set of jpeg's and tasked me with the job so I searched for all jpegs and found the pictures of her.

I don't know what to do if I delete them she will know, if I leave them someone else could find them if they haven't already and I wouldn't know how to have that conversation.

should I just do nothing?

P. Breathnach

Delete them and say nothing.

Paddy Cow

That sounds really odd. Why on earth would someone upload naked pictures of themselves at work? You should tell her. What if she doesn't know they are there and someone is running a smut campaign against her? As embarrassed as I would be, I sure as hell would want to know if someone was posting naked pictures of me at work :eek:

MagicMarker

If she's not techy and you delete them, she might think someone's "taken" them when she realizes they're gone. However, someone else finding them might not end well if they are not as discreet as you.

I think it's best you delete them and say nothing.

Boombastic

Tell the boss and let him deal with it. Work is no place for naked photos of yourself

Czarcasm

Paddy Cow wrote: »

That sounds really odd. Why on earth would someone upload naked pictures of themselves at work? You should tell her. What if she doesn't know they are there and someone is running a smut campaign against her? As embarrassed as I would be, I sure as hell would want to know if someone was posting naked pictures of me at work :eek:

You'd be surprised Paddy the stuff you come across on company networks as a sysadmin, people would often store pictures of a personal nature on network shares simply through mere carelessness.

OP I'd be with PB on this one - just delete the pictures and say nothing to anybody. I don't think your work colleague is going to ask questions, that's if she even remembers putting them there in the first place or cares enough to notice they're missing. There are often instances where people have uploaded pictures temporarily to send them via e-mail or upload them to social media and they forget to delete them afterwards.

In the course of my work I've often come across pictures and videos even of a personal nature and I'd delete them or explain to the client that some data couldn't be recovered in the case of hard drive failure and system recovery/maintenance.

LegacyUser

Paddy Cow wrote: »

That sounds really odd. Why on earth would someone upload naked pictures of themselves at work? You should tell her. What if she doesn't know they are there and someone is running a smut campaign against her? As embarrassed as I would be, I sure as hell would want to know if someone was posting naked pictures of me at work :eek:

They are definitely hers it looks like she backed up her camera to the my pictures folder she would have to log in with a password and then browse to the photo so would probably think its private not knowing the whole folder is actually saved on the server with no password protection.

I have deleted the photo's as I agree with most of the posters in that she doesn't know they are there, all our backups will have backed them up but they will only be kept for a couple of months.

I'm not going to the boss or tell anyone as it isn't something I would want others to know I don't think many people would take it well and she could end up quitting so I will keep it to myself.

Paddy Cow

Czarcasm wrote: »

You'd be surprised Paddy the stuff you come across on company networks as a sysadmin, people would often store pictures of a personal nature on network shares simply through mere carelessness.

I'll take your word for it but how stupid do you have to be to upload something at work that you wouldn't want your colleagues to see?

Op can you tell who uploaded the pictures? This could be a massive can of worms for you. If it was the woman who made a silly mistake and uploaded them herself and wouldn't want anyone else to see them, then the best course of action would be to delete them and say nothing.

If it turns out later that she had no idea, would you get in trouble for deleting them and not saying anything?

Can you tell if anyone else has accessed or downloaded these photo's?

Czarcasm

Paddy Cow wrote: »

I'll take your word for it but how stupid do you have to be to upload something at work that you wouldn't want your colleagues to see?

Op can you tell who uploaded the pictures? This could be a massive can of worms for you. If it was the woman who made a silly mistake and uploaded them herself and wouldn't want anyone else to see them, then the best course of action would be to delete them and say nothing.

If it turns out later that she had no idea, would you get in trouble for deleting them and not saying anything?

Can you tell if anyone else has accessed or downloaded these photo's?

Well the OP said they came from backups of the various employees "my documents" folders from each of their computers (the file server would be like a central storage unit), so he could indeed get the whole history and the source of the file (also the fact these are backups means they're just copies and the originals still exist on the computer they came from), so it could well be that his work colleague will never know the difference if he deletes the photos.

As for how stupid a person has to be, well, as the OP mentioned, some of the staff aren't too clued in on the IT side of things, and many employees will treat their work laptops and computers, even phones, like they are personal property rather than company property.

P. Breathnach

Is there a danger that the pictures still exist on her local computer, and will be uploaded to the server again? Can you prevent such a thing happening?

Meauldsegosha

OP does your office have an acceptable usage policy? If yes you could find yourself in trouble for deleting the photos and not reporting them to your manager. I worked in IT in my last job and we were obliged to report unauthorised use of the company's computers to management.

KyussBishop

Meauldsegosha wrote: »

OP does your office have an acceptable usage policy? If yes you could find yourself in trouble for deleting the photos and not reporting them to your manager. I worked in IT in my last job and we were obliged to report unauthorised use of the company's computers to management.

That's worth noting alright, but it's a bit of a moral dilemma: If they aren't deleted and management is informed, it's pretty much a certainty that other people (management) are going to see these pictures, and there's no 'acceptable usage policy' that can justify that, in my view.

I know it's awkward as hell, but she should probably be informed about it - someone that bad with tech, that can accidentally upload naked pictures of themselves to a corporate fileserver (ffs...), kind of needs to know just how careless/dumb they've been, before they end up doing the same thing again (and they may need to get rid of stuff the OP didn't find as well).

In general, it's pretty dumb for people to have such pictures on computers/devices anyway.

Czarcasm

I think OP what may have happened is she hooked up her personal phone to her computer at some stage and the pictures synced automatically from her phone to her computer. Chances are she may not even be aware THAT has happened, but if they do backups where only files that have changed are backed up, there's every chance the photos could keep being uploaded to the backup fileserver and you may have to keep deleting them. She may not even be aware of her mis-use of company property so you may just have to have a quiet word with her in case someone else were to see the pictures and well, they may think nothing of spreading them around the office.

Tokyo

Pretty much what Czarcasm said above - I've seen the same thing happen when a colleague I worked with plugged her phone into the computer to charge. Auto upload, and his photos were sitting in a shared folder. The only good thing is that it was you that found them, and not somebody with less morals.

Delete the photos, if you have access to do so, and say nothing about them. The fact that you only found them by accident means that there's a good chance they haven't been discovered by colleagues yet, so get on it asap. If the colleague never finds out, great, and if she does find out, then what's the worst she's going to think? I imagine something along the lines of "Oh thank God they aren't spread across the internet".