Naïve is an understatement. What amazes me is the number of otherwise intelligent people who still don't understand that, in the world of computers, there is no such thing as "free." EVERYTHING has a cost. It may not be money, but it will still cost you.

There's that "free" software, overloaded with viruses and spyware...

That "free" toolbar, which "phones home" regularly with, at best, your browsing habits, and at worst, everything a criminal needs to steal your identity or empty your bank account...

That software that's "free" because you bought it personally, and are now installing it a second time, in violation of its license agreement...exposing you and the company to criminal actions for copyright infringement...

That pron website that's "free," and immediately attacks your computer with pop-ups and spyware, making it slow to a crawl...

Etc., etc., etc....

Like I said, everything has a cost.

 

I find and report the use of many of these tools regularly,and the people rarely get away with it.


It turns out that because of the intracasies of the MSWindows operating system (95% used in business environments), it is actually very HARD to cover ALL of your tracks. Simply changing the system clock on a computer affects several different areas that I can access to make the determination that the clock was changed. In conjunction with other activity, I cna generally piece together all the activity that occurred. So many hiding places fo rgood data on computers, Iwill never go hungry. How many people know to clear the contents of the prefetch folder when covering up nefarious activity? How about deleted INFO2 records in unallocated space?

If you wipe a disk completely, often the courts will find an "adverse inference" against you, meaning that no matter what was on the drive, since you wiped it after knowing legal action was possible, the data you wiped was probably damning against you and the court then ASSUMES you were doing wrong. Not a good boat to be sitting in...

 

He's trying to merge multiple PDF's into one. Dosent look like this software will do that...

 

Hard one, I have "administrator rights" on my computer since I use all types of software, and need the ability to download something on the fly without asking first....if I need it for work.

I would take the proper channels on this one....its always best to make a paper trail