Although I like a good laugh, I think this kind of behavior is very rude. Accidentally leaving the front door of your house open isn’t an excuse for anyone to just go in and spray graffiti all over the wall, is it? Of course it could, and probably should be qualified as “your own dumb fault” but that doesn’t make it less rude in my eyes. If you really respect your colleagues you should note them of locking their workstations in a more friendly way.
What’s interesting to me is the number of people here who don’t see the fundamental difference between (a) changing somebody’s wallpaper to something silly (not pornographic), which makes the point but is easily fixed without wasting someone’s time, and (b) making changes that will cause the person to waste hours of time and aren’t easy to fix.
(b) is not a prank; it’s vandalism.
Oh, and a fun one in some versions of Windows was to go into Control Panel Mouse, click the Orientation tab, and move the mouse steadily to the upper-right or upper-left. Alas, I’m not sure Windows XP has that tab anymore.
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Nice 
Where I live, i can leave my computer open for all eternity, and nothing bad will happen! Not for the others though.
The absolute best at my place of employment, where I am the chief perpetrator, is you go into their outlook, then set it to open their Adaware everytime they get an email from someone specific, like yourself or their boss. Then they start to think they have a virus or spyware within 2-3 emails, never fail. Lock your stations!
We have been goa(d)ting at my cube farm for some months now, its getting harder to find unlocked computers these days 
And my favorite prank is to change the “Target” in the properties of IE shortcut icon in the desktop and quicklaunch to “shutdown.exe -s -t 0” and save the user’s open files to a temporary folder and lock their system (so someone else does not do a double prank) and after the user returns, tell them there’s some important headline in some news website so they click their IE icon and the system shuts down 
The clippy spoof works great in wine-0.9.47. Thank god the team I lead is using Ubuntu, loathes Windows, has a passion for hating clippy, and for some reason has given me sudo rights on all their boxen…
Wow I sure am glad I read this! Now i understand why everything is so screwed up in this country! If you actually spent as much time and effort actually doing something productive instead of screwing over your friends and fellow workers, imagine how much more sense everything would make! This goes on in HOSPITALS and stuff too. No I’m sorry, mild electrocution is too nice! Permanent ink in the face should be added at the very least! And any and all instances of goating found should get their butts chewed for decreasing productivity under the raggedly thin disguise of security. Seems like this is the kind of thing causing so much INSECURITY in an office setting. I wouldn’t just not feel right about doing this kind of thing, I would be horribly ashamed. And I would never trust you with anything of any importance either because it’s quite clear you are still about 12 years old emotionally. No wonder the government is so paranoid, since this is so widespread. Can’t you guys see what’s WRONG about this? YOU ARE the people we must worry about, not some imagined outside threat! YOU ARE the people screwing up productivity! YOU ARE what you claim to be teaching us to protect ourselves from!I wonder if we cut this bs out for just one week how much better everything would work? I bet you couldn’t do it though because it gives you such a sense of power, control and prowess to screw with people doesn’t it? GET A LIFE!
I can’t believe what kind of managers there are out there. Not locking your computer is a pretty small misstake and I doubt its very likely to lead to a real security problem. I think there are much worse things you should concentrate on. If someone unknown sits by my computer and starts stealing stuff I can be sure someone around starts raising some serious questions.
Ok so you forgot to lock the computer, made a misstake. Do you handle all misstakes the same way. Send out on email to the entire company: “Listen up people! Today John has fucked up again! He did this and that! Shame on him!” Like public humilation for small misstakes? I’m pretty sure your company goes straight to hell with that attitude. If it’s a real problem, you take it up with him privately.
Changing a screensaver, well thats funny. Public humilation, or straight out sabotage on someone elses computer is not. Not to mention sending email in someone elses name is a criminal act.
You can still have fun if the PC IS locked …
Anyone still using a ball mouse? Just remove the ball out of their mouse although this DOES make the mouse feel a lot lighter. Or just unscrew the bottom and leave … when they pick the mouse up, the ball falls out.
Alternatively, having sysadmin privileges is fun when your “target” doesn’t.
One guy wrote an AS/400 login script, which required the target to answer “Yes” to 3 questions, (basically admitting his love for a rival football team) BEFORE his login continued. If he answered “no” to any of the questions, he was immediately logged out. The guy left this login script on the targets account for a a good few weeks! Classic!
One particularly excellent instance of ‘goating’ (incidentally I never knew it was called that), involved a colleague not locking his station, AND leaving himself logged into facebook. Of course it was almost ‘de rigeur’ that I change his facebook profile picture and tag him in it, the new pic? well that was a naked cowboy sat on a washtub… god bless you google images!
Dude, don’t touch my shit. Don’t vandalize my mouse, don’t swap my m and n keys, don’t change my settings, don’t send an email from my computer offering free donuts to everyone. If I wanted to work in a God-pounded kindergarten, that’s where I’d be.
Do you want me to start spitting in your soda when you’re away from your desk?
I believe that the term “Goating” is in reference to “Getting your goat”. The full definition is here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=get+your+goat.
“Goating” in the context used, would be defined as “laying bait in order to attract someone’s goat”. This practice happens in all areas of life, mind you; not just the workplace.
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Brandon:
There is an actual bluescreen screensaver that is much more realistic than I suspect you can do. No offense or anything, but this thing is amazing. You can find it on microsoft.com.
My favorite is to append this to the bottom of the victim’s .bashrc file in the Linux lab at my school:
alias bash="xeyes bash"Used to do this years ago- Typing MODE CO40 at the dos prompt was an old fave… Back in the days when locking your keyboard involved using a key.
I am glad I read this so I know what kinds of things can happens when one is surrounded by insensitive louts in an office setting, and the manpaper.com link, which has some awesome pictures of guys, in fact, I would not be upset to find most of them on my desktop! Of course I would have to change it at the office, but install it at home.
OF COURSE I had to look up the goatse thing which turned out to be pretty hilarious, I am keeping that one too. But beware! Touch my PC and it’s WAR, and I won’t stop at your unlocked PC, I have 1001 uses for things like super glue and more! We will see if you are still laughing when it’s all been done. Better yet I am very good at being sneaky, so you may NEVER figure it out! I may even get the evidence to point at your rival or best friend instead. I have EVERY RIGHT, after all you let your guard down didn’t you?
It’s all for the sake of teaching you a much-needed lesson in proper respect for your co-workers in the workplace, so you can hardly get bent out of shape for my kindness and concern in this matter can you? If so you just need to LOOSEN UP! Like that -um- reciever at goatse.
Which will NOT be quite so horrifying by comparison after I finish my “lesson”.
Sleep well tonight little pranksters… I could be lurking in the next cubicle down…
Hi Jeff, long time reader of your blog - some great stuff in there!
In case you haven’t heard this news story across the pond, the UK government has been learning the hard way about some other security issues:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103828.stm
I’m reminded of your post on rainbow tables and how easily password protected data can be cracked, and to know that my details could very well be going to the highest bidder in a few days is not fun 
Maybe I should take a leaf out of your book and install ‘Clippy’ on some of the Home Office computers!
Hah, I submitted that Jargon File entry back in Summer 1999 from Fitten 411 at Georgia Tech. Good times, Shouts out to my roommate Marcus Kwok!
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If goating becomes an issue at a workplace, I recommend a proximity sensor like what Blackberry offers. They have a Bluetooth smartcard reader that offers some decent security functionality. Step away from the desk, your screen locks. Walk back, screen unlocks ready to continue.
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I think the thing that all the people who like shit, superglue, and so on are missing is ease of reversibility. My wallpaper’s changed, it’s a second to change back, porn or not. My icons are shuffled around, it’s a few minutes to find them all. In situations like that, I can laugh, because it’s not something that harms me or wastes significant amounts of time.
Formatting? Feces and glue on the keyboard? How could you possibly think that’s on the same magnitude as moving a few things around?