What would you've done?

[shiftyj]

What would you do?

Long time lurker, first time posted-

One of the core things i think about our little hobby here, is anticipation? The unknown? The idea that nude by itself isn't half as interesting as half nude and wondering what else there is. . .

Along those lines- About a year ago I experienced one of the weirdest coincedences I've ever seen (and wondering why I never have this happen when I play the lottery). I dropped off a pc at the place where I got it because it was acting up. They asked me if it was ok to wipe the thing if they had to reinstall Windows and I said sure, I'd only had it a week and hadn't finished 'moving in' anyway, everything of imprtance was still backed up on my other machine. When I picked it up it was still acting up - not to the point of fail, but definitely not what you'd expect for an expensive new computer. I'm somewhat knowledgeable in troubleshooting- not professional level but enough to get by, and I hadn't been able to fix the problem and thought it was hardware related.

I went back and it was still messed up and the repairman worked on it a bit in front of me, me making suggestions and him swapping a component or two out but he couldn't fix it and refused to replace it, "Not our policy". I picked it up walked out with it in a big slef righteous huff, determined to write to the BBB, his boss, and anyone who'd listen.

A few hours later I started working on the pc at home. It looked like they had reinstalled it, no password for the admin account, and in the process of setting up I noticed there were some files already? I experienced a moment of disorientation - What were my work files doing on this thing? I never mix my work files with home pc. For a few seconds. . .well, I didn't panic but it's like walking into an unfamiliar house and seeing your own furniture!

I opened a couple of the files. They were not mine at all. They were the templates and file names we use at my work but they weren't mine! Looked at the properties and saw the name of the person who it belonged to. A lady in another departmnt, I recognized her name but that was all. I work at a mid-size company, in a city of over a million. Think of the odds.

I'm looking through the files, taking in the implications that the idiot repairguy had somehow swapped in a hard drive from another customer, a coworker. I could get that little know-it-all canned! And then I thought. . .Photos!

I found the photo folder. Blah blah, boring. Boring. Hey wait, I do recognize her- she's actually pretty hot. Boring photo, boring silly photo. . .then fully clothed bathroom self shot. Then not-as fully clothed bathroom self shot. Then I saw the next one at thumbnail size and it was even less clothed. Still PG rated but we all know the progression of what the next photo probably would be. Holy crap! I stopped looking. I realized I didn't want to look anymore- I might have to work with this lady and I'd never be able to look at her again the same way. Plus, to be honest I wanted her to know about this - ENF and snooping is all well and good as a fantasy but this was real life. Hell, she could probably sue the company.

So I contacted her that very night. She was kind of non-chalant at first, agreed it was a weird coincidence, but didn't seem interested, just said to do whatever I wanted with it. I tried, lamely, to describe, in a roundabout what I thought might be in the photos and that was why the repair guy was keeping the HD but that I hadn't really looked just suspected and I swore I hadn't really looked, I probably sounded like Jerry Lewis doing "Hey Lady". She said she didnt care.

I almost started to wipe the hard drive, in fact was a second or two from doing so when she called back, very. .chalant now. She asked me to look at file dates in the Documents folder. The newest was over a year old. . .

She sounded mad. She told me she'd used that computer store before, and had them transfer old files to new computer, but a long time ago. That meant that Mr Repairguy had been sitting on her HD for that long. She was very interested now, and so I pulled the HD and brought it to her, and she assured me she had a tech friend who could get the contents off it.

I bump into her now and then and always turn into a stammering mess because I'm almost positive there were some damned good photos on that hard drive, and she must surely think I've seen them. But I didn't look! I was "good". I asked her once, a month after all this, if she'd sued or what she was doing and she said she had been too busy to even think about the mess and was trying not to think about it.

To top it - It's funny how you work in the same building with someone for 5 years and never see them now I see her everywhere. She stopped by my cube and I honestly didn't recognize her for a second and I actually said, "Oh, sorry, I'm terrible with...faces." Which is true, but I think probably sounded terrible in context!

So anyway.

Nothing on that HD can possibly be as good as wondering what's on it. . .but when should I look at the copy I made?

[bradmajors]

I would have bought the largest USB drive I could find, and backed up the whole thing. Then again, I'm such a dedicated voyeur that I wouldn't worry about ramifications. Ever since I learned what a Linux usb boot key can do, i have been looking out for oportunitys to do a bit of "archival" work.

[ez2b0e]

and then .. protecting her privacy .. post here!!!

[Seattle451]

I would definitely look.

[nakedskin2000]

I would have looked at them, saved them, jerked off to them, and lied my ass off about seeing them!

[DRDavenport]

She probably did not believe you didn't look at them, so you might as well have!

[Esq2K]

Originally Posted by DRDavenport

She probably did not believe you didn't look at them, so you might as well have!

Yup, I agree !!!

[piecenick]

I have to confess, I own a computer service company and I had a similar situation. One of our neighbors called me at home one night in a panic, the hard drive on her PC crashed and it contained hundreds, maybe thousands of family pics from the last 10 years, could I recover them?

It was hours of painstaking work retrieving the files, a lot of them were damaged, but most were not. Somewhere about 8 hours in the usual boring family pics were interrupted by nude pics of my neighbor, a 45ish now obviously bleached blonde. My dilemma is that she will know that I might see these, do I ask her if she wants me to stop?

So I called her and point blank asked he, "the process is going well, but I am recovering some pictures of a personal nature, do you want me to stop?"

She hemmed and hawed a little then said, "I forgot those were on there, my husband and I used to get a little frisky with the camera....I guess I'll have to count on your professional discretion."

I cheated a little, no I didn't keep any copies, but since my wife shared some boudoir pics she took of several of her friends with me, she got a peek.

[Gnome72141]

I have had something similar happen twice.

1) My wife's friend's annoying husband was talking about harddrive recovery, and I told him I can recover stuff using free tools. He had an old laptop at the house, so we went downstairs, and I started recovering jpegs. We opened them and there was one of his wife, topless, on the floor. He got upset, but did a good job keeping it in. This was a few years ago, and whenever I see his wife, I still remember exactly what she has going on under her top.

2) My sister in law's friend had a hard drive crash, and asked me to help. Sister in law brought the laptop to me, and I started getting files back and I ran into some pregnancy pictures. I asked the sister in law if I should keep going, since some people take pregnancy photos topless, nude, etc. The sister in law said, "keep going, trust me, she won't care." Yep, total nude photos pregnant, going all the way back to when she assumed she was pregnant, too! She told the friend later what I saw. Friend emailed me to thank me and said, "sorry I can't afford to pay you, but hopefully seeing me naked is payment enough!" I never did actually meet the friend in person, ha.