I reread the email, rechecked the address that I was on and the address that I was sending to, and finally with everything double-checked, hit "send."
"Have you been a naughty slut lately Maryann?
Sir."
~~~
I sighed and shook my head as I perused the readout of the activity since I quit and went home last night. It never failed to amaze me that with the computer and internet, being the lifeblood of the 21st-century business, every day there were people online, on their work computers, who didn't realize that "big brother" -- that's me - was looking over their shoulder.
Much of what I had to do was automated; auto-prevention of accessing "prohibited" sites; scanning for malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks. Much of what I did was repetitive and fast and simple for me to correct, but for those who only ran into a "problem" once a year or so, it would seem the instructions might as well have been written in Greek as they were difficult for them to follow easily. Consequently, I fielded multiple calls a day where I would remotely log on and take control of the user's computer, correct the problem, and usually move on.
But despite the automated protections, seldom did an hour go by that some type of attack on the system wasn't detected. Unfortunately, most of those anymore came through "higher ups": Vice-Presidents, Presidents, CEOs, and the like -- those who were in charge of the business, and heaven forbid some peon (like me) in IT should tell them they can or can't peruse some pornography on their work computer after-hours. Mary at the front desk, sure -- I could restrict her computer so all she could do was play solitaire when she wasn't busy. Tim, from Business Development, had a higher clearance as he was constantly talking with Chinese suppliers, but still, he had set "permissions." Linda, in shipping, also had higher clearances on her computer as they shipped virtually everywhere, but mostly the totally unrestricted computers belonged to those still higher up -- and those people "higher up" constantly gave me a headache -- daily. When I detected something that, according to the "rules," shouldn't have happened, and it came from one of those who made the rules, I had to delicately tell them "big brother" had seen something.
Once again, this morning, I could see there had been two attempts to infiltrate backward into us last night, both through the same IP address, and a short bit of sleuthing indicated which computer it had been initiated from. Helen Peterson, VP of HR and known to be a workaholic, had for the second night in a row tried to access some site that tried to follow her back into her computer.
I surveyed what I knew about Helen in my mind. In her late forties, perhaps in her early fifties, she was quite an elegant and imposing figure around the office. I knew she'd been married to the same guy, her second, for years. Her first marriage had been right after high school and, as they were divorced just slightly over a year later, told me their marriage had been about sex, not love. I suspected she found out she could have sex without marriage, or that he had, but regardless, it had been 6 or 7 years later before she'd gotten married again. She had two middle teen-age kids at home, although I had no idea what her husband did, or even if he was still in the picture, just that her profile info said she was married.
I safely pulled up the IP address and was mildly surprised to find that Helen had tried to access a lesbian porn site. I guess I wasn't all that surprised, porn was where most of these attacks came from, but what surprised me was the lesbian aspect. At least I assumed that the headline
The Best of Girls on Girls
indicated that. I don't know whether I was 'supposed' to know that Helen was married and had two kids, but IT is now like the mailroom in the Michael J. Fox movie
The Secret of My Success
, where his co-worker tells him "that guy just got fired and doesn't know it but the mailroom knew about it on Friday." IT knows everything, often before those whom the information is actually intended for. We may not understand everything, but we know who is talking to whom, who is working on a secret project, who is writing a contract, who is married to whom, who is having an affair with whom... well, you get the picture. Consequently, as long as it doesn't affect the lifeblood of the company, our job is to see, observe, and keep everyone out of trouble. Discretion is in our job description.
Again, I reviewed Helen in my mind, this time purely from the physical aspect. Helen was one that worked out regularly; she had at one time been an aerobics instructor. Her legs, often seen as she wore many skirts, were gorgeous and muscular. Her bottom wasn't huge, but not a bad one to follow down the hall either, especially in a pair of form-fitting slacks, and her breasts were, well -- in the estimate of an ardent breast man - outstanding. She had a dynamite body that admittedly I'd admired discretely many times.
Along with the trouble IP address, I took a quick look at the records.
The Best of Girls on Girls
wasn't the only lesbian porn site she'd visited recently. I could see where she'd been dallying off the beaten path for quite a while, a couple of different lesbian porn sites in particular, although it was only the new one that had caused a problem. I put a block on that particular site for everyone, meaning that Helen would see the block tonight if she tried to go back, which meant that I needed to let her know about it today, tactfully. I needed to talk to her about Peter in procurement anyway -- he had again drifted into spending at least half the day on his personal email accounts and other things that weren't work-related. Whether she or someone else in management did anything about it wasn't my call, I'd just been requested to monitor and report.
"Got a minute?" I asked when I stopped by Helen's office later. It wasn't unusual. I stopped by about once a week or so, just that this time I was going to report something that Helen already knew about. "Peter's at it again," I said after I'd pulled her door shut and stepped inside, "maybe 4 hours a day at least. Work correspondence, already numbering in the hundreds, is awaiting info or response from him."
"Okay," Helen sighed, "I'll take care of it. Thanks for the update."
"Had a Chinese site that turned out to be a sham, almost immediately started getting pings from there. We blocked it; it had a name very similar to one that BD is working through some possible purchases from, just a small "L" instead of a capital "I" in the name, so obviously a scam in the making. I told BD about it, that if they came up with a blocked site to check their spelling." I stopped and looked at my list, "Had a couple of strange attacks on the system the last few nights, traced it back to what appears to be a lesbian porn site. I went ahead and blocked that one site, no idea yet who it was," I lied. "Maybe somebody in Linda's department? It happened just about the lunch break on the night shift. Probably no big deal there."
"Ah, OK." She paused; I could tell she was formulating an approach to keep me from investigating further, the slight flush on her cheeks confirming everything that I already knew. "No idea yet which computer?"
"No, I can spend some time and track it down...."
"Ok, well, if you've got that malicious site blocked, don't worry about it for now and I'll speak to the girls down there."
Did she really think that I didn't know it was her computer?
"Will do, no problem."
"Anything else?"
"Nope, just another week."
I set a ping for the porn sites that Linda had been visiting, and there was no activity for three more days, and then, late one evening when everyone in that office should have gone home, a warning ping popped up on my terminal. Although I wasn't logged onto Linda's terminal, I just mirrored what she was doing on my computer and watched. What she was doing and seeing was displayed not just on her screen, but also on mine.
As I had thought, she was watching lesbian or at least bisexual videos. Girl-on-Girl cunnilingus, mutual masturbation, and toy play seemed to be her main focus, although the occasional application of a live cock didn't seem to slow her down. I didn't record anything, I just watched. If a senior officer wanted to do that, as long as it didn't affect the system, there was nothing for me to say.
Along with the warning ping, I'd also set up a recording trigger. While I could mirror what was happening on her screen to mine, I could also record the incoming and outgoing stream for analysis later. I did have a life other than my job after all. I watched along with her for about 20 minutes, watched as she stopped and repeated the video several times, noting that she particularly repeated scenes of a tongue on a clit multiple times. I shut down the live feed, triggered the recording, just allowed it to go on, and headed home. It crossed my mind as I headed home that she was probably in her office masturbating right at that moment.
I didn't often just log on in parallel like that to see what people were doing, but when directed to, as in the case of Peter, I did. It wasn't just anyone that could request such monitoring; a supervisor couldn't do it, but if they took it upstairs, and upstairs said to, I would keep track of someone more closely. Everyone else was usually correct in assuming that nobody was looking at what they were doing, but not always. Maybe three to four times a year I'd have a reason to be looking at a screen while others were doing something. For Helen's, as it had triggered an infiltration alert the last few nights, I didn't need permission to monitor.
Another thing that so many people don't realize is that when they access their private email accounts on the company computer, that means that I may be looking over their shoulder unbeknownst to them. And, if they leave that email unlocked, and I have a reason, I might be checking up on their activities or reading their emails. On their home computer, it's private. The thought that it is their "private" email no longer applies; if it's on the company computer, and they leave it logged in, I can peruse their no longer quite-so-private emails. Even if they don't leave the programs open, with the computer being owned by the company, I have the ability to log in and follow what people are doing. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of activities that occur that I'll never look at. Still, if someone thinks an accountant is embezzling, one of the first things that happens is that I'm directed to monitor or duplicate that person's screens, emails, and contacts to watch or provide to some investigator to monitor.
~
It was an innocuous call from Maryann that had me log on and perform some minor updates. Personally, I found Maryann moderately attractive. Perhaps late 20's, not a raving beauty, but not bad-looking by any means. She had a pleasantly rounded body, and the few times that I'd seen her in pants, I thought she had a marvelous booty. I'm normally a tit man myself, but something about Maryann in pants and the way her bottom filled them out would almost make me a believer. Not that she was bad in the tit department either. Not small busted, just pleasantly rounded in all respects. I helped her out, reset a couple of parameters for her, and then got distracted by someone coming into my office. I clicked off the screen and pulled up what I needed to, performed my usual magic, and almost an hour later inadvertently clicked on the icon that showed I was still logged on along with Maryann, able to see what she was seeing. I'd logged out of control, so just like when I was monitoring Linda's computer without her knowing I was there, I found myself inadvertently doing the same for Maryann. I wouldn't have thought anything about it, except that she had an email open and the line that caught my eye was "
