Need quick advice

The dean of the campus i admin asked me to get all the files from a teachers computer. he didnt give a reason but said it was very important and confidential. what do i do? that was all the info he gave me

 

also is it legal for me to do it? apparently the campus president gave the go ahead and i dont think the dean would have me do anything he knew to be illegal.

i was asked to do this now. and im currently copying stuff from the persons home drive as i type this.

 

yeah its a college campus. everyone has roaming profiles with a "home drive" for data storage sitting on a file server. i researched the legalities and found just what you said. thanks

 

Let me know what comes of this, k? I want to know (if your allowed to tell us) y it needed to be done.

 

i work at a university in michigan, and yep, it's the school's property, email, storage, everything...so yeah, you can copy anything you wish...that person should know that as well, andshouldn't be saving anything incriminating anyway....we had someone a long time ago (when the net was fairly new) get caught with porn and other not-so-nice-things...he was fired.

 

And if he was dumb enough to keep that on his work computer he deserved to be.

 

The only thing i would say, is to get the order in writing so you have proof of it later if **** hits the fan.

 

its a dont ask dont tell sort of thing. i guess if the teacher is still there next week, ill have some idea.

and as tim and tsg said, its perfectly legal apparently. i thought about getting a signed statement of what i was asked to do, but i figured it was legal...

thanks for the replies though.

 

What the guys said is right. But, like Halo said, don’t trust anything on a purely verbal basis.

On a similar legal(ish) note. I have issues with people giving me computers, with hard drives that may contain sensitive data/info on it. Which is why I make them sign a disclaimer that I'm not responsible for the leak or dissemination of any sensitive data. Of course, it's not going to happen, because I never intentionally read anything on anyone's H.D.D., but just protects me in case someone claims their sensitive info was leaked and points the finger at me. Never actually happened, but as they say - "Trust no one!".

 

I recently found out that I have the aptitude for "fixing computers" that have been literally torn up software wise and with this came a degree of patience for the literal stupidity of software people will put in thier computers and still expect the machine to function properly, have I become an accidental educator??

P.S. yes, get everything involving donated information or equipment on a legal disclaimer or you could find yourself in court