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A former Gizmodo writer changed his name to ‘Slackbot’ and stayed undetected for months

A former Gizmodo writer changed his name to ‘Slackbot’ and stayed undetected for months::Former Gizmodo writer Tom McKay managed to stay in the company’s workplace Slack even after leaving. All he had to do was change his name to “Slackbot.”

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

Reminds me of the time I found a professor’s lanyard (not the ID) in college and would just wave it around. Half the time, security shrugged and let me through without scanning my ID.

Unforeseen ,

Too bad it wasn’t a chemistry professor with access to the lab

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/9083263e-6bdf-499a-a5fa-7a0f3af091aa.webm

SplashJackson ,

Why would he do this

rdyoung ,

Why not?

mosiacmango ,

Gizmodo was bought out by a bucket of shitheads that clearly dont have their IT sorted, so it sounds like he did this out of a sense of mischief and curiosity.

It’s a fun IT story he got on leaving a bad org. Sounds like a win for a tech writer.

snorkbubs ,
@snorkbubs@fedia.io avatar

That was my first question as well, along with counting the many ways this could have turned out horribly. The article calls it a prank, but this had disastrous potential. Not just for the company; anything that goes wrong in that sector, in the way of IP theft and the like, will be blamed on the prankster first, until proven otherwise.

The casual way it's discussed, and calling it a prank, gets under my skin a little. Am I alone in that?

Think of how much policy will need to be typed up because of this, and again, the potential for disaster, on both sides. I'd be floored if a former employee did this to my team, and I wouldn't care if it was a joke, at all. At the very least, the dude would be trespassed, if for no other reason than to show he's been warned.

I'm just going to imagine that this guy wanted more funding allocated for his buddies in the IT department, and did this as a parting gift.

It's Just a Prank, Bro: Office Edition

rockSlayer ,

I want this headline art turned into a slack emoji. I want to add it to my company slack

nix ,
@nix@merv.news avatar

https://merv.news/pictrs/image/9dddaba5-979a-42e3-ade0-998d85efa37f.jpeg

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

That’s what IT Brew’s Tom McKay did when he left Gizmodo in 2022, and he went undetected by the site’s management for months.

If you’re not glued to Slack for most of the day like I am, then you might not know that Slackbot is the friendly robot that lives in the messaging service.

It helps you do things like set reminders, find out your office’s Wi-Fi password, or let you know when you’ve been mentioned in a channel that you’re not a part of.

When it was his time to leave, McKay swapped out his existing profile picture for one that resembled an angrier version of Slackbot’s actual icon.

Have a Slack-ly day!” My colleague Victoria Song, who previously worked at Gizmodo, isn’t all that surprised that this situation unfolded, and says, “As Tom’s former coworker and a G/O Media survivor, this tracks.”

Of course, not every company will fall for this trick, as some have security measures in place to prevent this kind of thing.

The original article contains 343 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 51%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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