Don't click the link? Okay. I clicked it, now what? Tech Support |
- Don't click the link? Okay. I clicked it, now what?
- An encounter with what may be the stupidest user in the universe...
- Our company spends lots of money on IT. Please make use of them.
- Is That Uppercase 'T' or Lowercase 't'?
- The coworker did it.
- A wired, wireless dongle
- But I did all the orders from yesterday...
- A blast from the past
- The Missing Link
- If I don't know what it is, it doesn't matter
- Youthful Enthusiasm
- Sometimes color/shape coding is not your friend
| Don't click the link? Okay. I clicked it, now what? Posted: 18 Apr 2018 08:38 AM PDT FTLT, etc. I'm primarily a software developer, but our engineering department is also our IT department, and as such when $Boss is out all of the IT calls go to me. So begins our descent into the madness of teaching internet security to the technically illiterate. Our story begins on the second day of $Boss's business trip to Important Client™. I get a frantic email from $SecurityRisk (one of our operators) yelling about her email being hacked. I book it over to her cubical to get the full scoop: around a dozen clients have sent her an email complaining about receiving phishing emails from her address. I immediately check her outbox and see nothing of the sort has been recorded. Understanding that this doesn't rule out the possibility of a breach, I immediately suspend access to her account and ping $Boss to grant me access to the remote email server. Checking the server logs, I see absolutely no sign of intrusion or evidence of the phishing emails leaving our server. Huh, this is very suspicious. This means that either the culprit has complete admin control of the box (incredibly unlikely, given that the rest of our system doesn't appear compromised) or that the emails have been somehow spoofed. Suspecting the latter, I take a closer look at the headers of one of the phishing emails, which has been forwarded to us by a cooperative client. Apparently the phisher had been masquerading as $SecurityRisk by spoofing the "From" field, which includes both a human-readable name and the email address. Applications like gmail show just the name to users, which is what caused the alarm: apparently the phisher had just been using her name, but the email address was clearly from some throw-away hotmail account. After sending out an email to everyone@$MyCompany and our clients making them aware of the phishing attempt and (internally) good email practices in general, I had hoped to get back to my work. Alas, $SecurityRisk sends another frantic email a few minutes later complaining that "a hacker was still in her account and sending emails, with proof!" Okay, I need to nip this one in the bud, so I wrap up what I'm doing and go over to see what she's complaining about. At her desk, I ask her to show me the "hacked" emails, and see exactly the same culprit using exactly the same phishing scam I described in the email. However, this time he decided to send an email directly to her, using "her own" email account. This email body contained an (admittedly real looking) link to a drop-box account that was clearly another phishing attempt. After telling her to just delete and ignore it, she responded by saying "but what should I do with the drop-box window?" I spin around and see that she had clicked the dangerous link, 5 minutes after receiving an email where I explicitly informed everyone not to click suspicious links in emails and seconds after I told her in person not to click it! I confiscated her computer and sent her to her manager. We wiped the computer. Needless to say, the situation was resolved when absolutely nothing changed, she was issued a new (much better) computer, and continued complaining about "spammy emails" for the rest of the week. tl;dr: User "gets email hacked," which is just a clever phishing attempt, is told that it's a scam and to avoid clicking links from the scammer, clicks the link anyway, no discipline received whatsoever. -edit: You guys more than [link] [comments]  |
| An encounter with what may be the stupidest user in the universe... Posted: 18 Apr 2018 08:29 PM PDT Prologue: I know TFTS is often pretty forgiving in terms of allowing stories that are a little out of the ordinary and when I posted this on another sub, I was encouraged to share it here. Enjoy! This call starts the way all my calls do: "Hello, this is Thomas with Interstellar Tech Support. Who I am going to give five-star service to today?" Then there is a long pause. I stare at the picture on my screen. It was pointing at...a wall? A yellowish wall. And that is it. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I immediately slam the mute on my headset control and then mash the volume down key on my keyboard. Then I unmute. "Yes, just fine, and if I could ask you to step a bit back from your computer's microphone, that would be great. Also, any chance you could adjust your video camera?" Another long pause. I do not understand your specialized lingo. Please say it in a basic way that normal creatures can understand. Woof. This is not going to be a good call. Time to triage...I can control the volume issue but it would really help if -- "There should be a ball with a cord coming out of it. Attached to it is a circle of glass in a plastic case. Please point the circle of glass at yourself." Another long pause. Then the image begins to shake, and - slowly - lowers? Oh dear God, this thing had its camera pointed at the ceiling. Whoever - or whatever - I'm talking to, I still can't see it. The camera is now pointed towards an unused console in the corner of the room. Well...it's a start. "Anyway, can you tell me what seems to be the problem?" I can't bring planets to my ship. I frown. This...is new. "I'm sorry?" PLANETS. TO MY SHIP. This is definitely going to be a call I can't handle on my own. I open a drawer on my desk to summon my colleague Jack Daniels out. I take a quick swig. "I'm very sorry, but...that is not possible." YES, it IS. I do it ALL THE TIME. "Can you...explain a bit more? About how you bring planets to your ship?" I have heard loud sighs before. I have heard exasperated ones. But this is the first one that made me want to murder someone. I decide which PLANET I want to bring to my SHIP, and then I put the LOCATION of the planet into my PLANET BOX here, and then a little while later, the PLANET appears. I thought you creatures were supposed to KNOW how this stuff WORKS? I take another brief consultation with Jack before responding. "Okay, I think I understand n --" FINALLY! I swallow. I glance at the printout I have over my workstation: DO NOT THREATEN VIOLENCE TO THE CUSTOMERS. "What happens when you, uh, try to bring a planet to your ship?" NOTHING. "Do you have your..." I sigh in spite of myself. "Your 'planet box' nearby?" Yes, it's right here. OBVIOUSLY. "Okay...and what do you see on the display?" I TOLD YOU I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR LINGO! "Your...the black rectangle where you see things. On the...planet box." WHY didn't you say so to BEGIN with? And I ALREADY told you - I see NOTHING. I have a long discussion with Mr. Daniels at this. "Have you tried hitting the power...er, have you pressed the red circle button?" YES. What do you think I am, STUPID? "Okay...so, just to humor me...can you press it again?" There is a low grumble on the other end, then a muffled click, and then a gentle bong. "Alright, great, looks like that solved --" NO! NO! It does NOT solve ANYTHING! "You said your problem was you don't see anything on your planet box." Because it was OFF. That's not the PROBLEM. It's not wise of me to kill the rest of the bottle, given that all I've had to eat this morning was a powdered doughnut...but...too late now. "So what is the problem?" I CAN'T BRING PLANETS -- "-- sorry, sorry, I misspoke. What is different about today than normal?" It's not letting me USE my PASSWORD. Progress! Ten minutes in and I have finally figured out what the problem is. "Ah, okay. So let's start with this - put in your username, like you usually do..." I ALREADY HAVE. "Okay. Very good. Now, don't type any --" The unmistakable sound of typing comes over the speaker. It is painfully slow, but typing, nonetheless. "You are typing." This is part statement of fact, part cry for help. NO I'M NOT. "I can hear you typing!" I AM JUST TYPING MY PASSWORD. "Stop it! STOP TYPING. DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING YOU STU --" I remind myself that the calls are monitored to maintain quality. "...upifyingly...um...wonderful...just please stop typing." Okay. It doesn't matter now, it says I put in my password too many times and now it won't let type anything. Fix it. I've made the "head-desk" joke many times, but never has the edge of my desk seemed quite so tempting. Sure, it would hurt...but maybe it would get me out of this conversation. "I had asked you to stop typing because if you put in your password incorrectly too many times -- which you have just done -- it locks you out of the system for an hour." FIX IT. "I can't!" YES YOU CAN! "Alright, you caught me," I say. My voice sounds a bit more manic than I planned. I drop it to a conspiratorial whisper. "But don't tell anyone, we keep this a secret from everyone because of...reasons. Let me just write something up here..." I open a remote session to the drive controls for the alien's ship. I try taking another swig of JD before remembering that I killed it. I take a breath. This is it. The end of my career, possibly my life. I override the security protocols and access the master control panel. "Thank you for calling Interstellar Tech Support. I have been pleased to be able to give you five-star service today. Your problem will be resolved presently." I bring up the self-destruct menu. "And on behalf of my fellow tech-support staff across the galaxy, I would like to tell you, firmly, sincerely, and in a basic way that even normal creatures can understand..." I enter the authorization code. The system acknowledges and begins the self-destruct sequence. "...get f!!ked." I end the call. A moment later, I go in search of more booze. [link] [comments]  |
| Our company spends lots of money on IT. Please make use of them. Posted: 18 Apr 2018 10:35 AM PDT As a support tech, there are things you expect from your users. I for example, as a L1 printer tech, expect my tickets to be vaguely worded, expect tickets that aren't in your scope but were given to you because they involve the printer, and expect every other user to make a remark about getting a new printer or pushing it down the stairs. What you don't expect, is this same sort of thing from your coworkers, especially when do they same thing you do and have had the same training. Now I should preamble this with the fact that we are encouraged to help each other out when possible, like when we need to borrow a part, or forgot a little used process, but I should also preamble this with the fact that the man asking this question is the man who trained me when I started working for this company, and the question is outside both our scopes. His email reads:
I was working on a machine when I received this, which I remember because my brain had a difficult time shifting gears to process what he just sent me. Send you the server? Sure, I'll call up M$ and have them put it on a truck for you. I reply:
I go back to purging paper jams thinking that will be the end of that, but he then calls me.
I open my mail app and see nothing like that in the menu options.
I thumbed my phone off feeling bewildered, befuddled, and blindsided. It bears repeating, I was trained by this person. He has been at the company for many years. Besides IT, He had four different managers to call and a whole list of people who had been working there longer than a few months. Why he called me, I couldn't fathom. The whole incident caused me to doubt everything I thought I knew about tech support. If we aren't safe from dumb user problems with our fellow support techs, are we ever safe at all? [link] [comments]  |
| Is That Uppercase 'T' or Lowercase 't'? Posted: 18 Apr 2018 01:03 PM PDT LTL FTP yada yada yada. So it's been a slow day at the help desk, like unusually slow. The kind of slow day that makes you cringe whenever you get a call because you know there's about a 50/50 chance that call is going to be nothing or somehow everything is broken. Nonetheless, this call transpired just moments ago: $me -> Friendly ol' oTurtlez $usr -> Mysterious User on the Phone [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2018 06:26 AM PDT Since I started working tech support less than a year ago, the list of what I consider to be "basic computer skills" has already shrunk significantly. Today, there's one more thing I can cross of that list. I answer a call and the problem is something like this.
I quickly check some of the most common causes, but find no problems yet.
I ask her to start up teamviewer, otherwise this is going to take all day. There's no way I can know where they might have saved these files, but I go through some folders anyway. I find nothing.
Yes, I would very much like that.Coworker (CW) doesn't even work in the same building. I ring her up, and it just gets worse.
Side-note: that website does use Java and there was a very recent update that I assumed might not have been installed yet. And before you ask, yes, I know, and no, I can't help it.
I'm just baffled by how stubborn she is. I saw her coworkers computer, there weren't any shared folders, cloud services or anything similar installed, I know the files are stored on a local drive.
Edit: a few typos. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2018 11:50 AM PDT So I work for a bank and was visiting one of our branches for the day doing some workstation replacements and other odds and ends. Everything is going as normal as I start replacing the last user's workstation. As I am removing the old machine and unplugging everything from the station I noticed a USB extender cable but didn't think much of it initially because some desks we have aren't the most cable management friendly and a mouse or keyboard may need it to properly reach the computer. I then notice that the user only has a single usb keyboard with a wireless mouse, which made me question the extender that I had seen earlier. I was curious what it was being used for seeing as there is nothing else the user has that would require a usb connection. As I followed the cable that I had plugged back into the new workstation I find it just laying there. I picked it up and what do I see? The wireless dongle to their wireless mouse plugged into the other end. I couldn't help but just laugh and wonder who had offered the user the cable in the first place since I have only been here for about 2 years and rarely visit the specific branch. I quickly removed the cable and plugged the dongle into the workstation without mentioning anything to the user and finished the set up. [link] [comments]  |
| But I did all the orders from yesterday... Posted: 18 Apr 2018 08:57 AM PDT Hello all, I love stories where users realize that they themselves are being stupid. This is such a story I work tier one support for a company that does sales. We have an in house program that manages shipping for the orders we get and such. I get a call from a branch manager saying that this program is having an issue for one of his users and that is he going to transfer me to her (why she didn't just call in the first place is beyond me). So she picks up the line and this is what ensues...
I remote in and see that indeed it is still showing orders from yesterday. I take a look and it shows all of these orders were placed after 5pm. A little side note is that this company across the board (as far as customers are concerned) closes at 5pm
There is a slight pause as the gears start to turn
So glad it is not a Monday. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2018 12:44 PM PDT This one is a pretty simple story but someone might find it amusing. I am a student technician working for a college and today a faculty member requested we retrieve a book he wrote from a floppy disk. Most of this technology was created before I was born so it felt a lot like trying to work with a typewriter. I retrieved a floppy disk drive that someone had almost thrown out a couple weeks prior and got to work copying WPD files onto a 4 GB flash drive (just under 4000x more than the space necessary) when it encountered an error writing to the drive. Knowing how often this means a file just can't be written properly I prepared for the worst and assumed I would run into this issue for every file. For kicks I decided to "Try Again" expecting the worst and it just worked... I was honestly stunned. Since when was the "Try Again" button in Windows anything but cosmetic? I almost still can't believe what I just saw. Fun side note it was weird to see last modified dates that started before and ended after the day I was born. That's all, not too exciting but for some reason I was giddy after experiencing all of this. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2018 09:58 AM PDT I work for an ISP in tech support. We take residential and business calls and every so often, I come across a real gem... The players in this little drama are: Me - a tech IT - a customer's IT guy Me: Thank you for calling ISP, my name is Tech. How may I assist you? IT: Hey, I'm IT callinf for Business. They're not able to get online on any device. Me: I'll be happy to help. Do you have the account number or online number on the account? IT: Yeah, it's #. the phone number pulls no account...oh dear Me: Could it be under a different number? we eventually end up searching by MAC address Me: I did find the account, but it appears to be disconnected. IT: . . . Seriously? Me: Yes, it shows an authorized user or account holder called yesterday to have it disconnected. IT: That doesn't sound right... puts me on hold, presumably to talk to the customer IT: You're not going to believe this... They thought that our service was their ISP and they didn't need you. We told them to call and have their service reconnected. [link] [comments]  |
| If I don't know what it is, it doesn't matter Posted: 18 Apr 2018 10:01 AM PDT Greetings TFTS! Long time reader/lurker, first time poster, all that jazz. I've relatively new to the IT world, just under a full year of professional experience under my belt. I'm currently a Tier 1 nose grinder/queue monkey for an agency with multiple tech departments (server team, programming team, data security team, etc.), but I've been doing tech support like things for close to a decade between family, and past jobs figuring out that I'm a "computer guy" (you all know how that goes). Turns out I had a knack for problem solving, following directions, and having enough patience to deal with your typical user (I'd like to thank my family for being perfect examples of what to expect). Today's tale is a story about one of those users who complain that we don't help them, only to discover they're making it very difficult to do exactly that. The Cast: $Me = yours truly $OL = Older Lady who works for one of the many departments we provide support for $Me: Good morning, this is [place where I work]'s Technical Support Desk, how can I help you this morning? $OL: I'd like an update on this ticket! $Me: I'd be happy to give you the latest status, could I please have the ticket number in question? $OL: [Rattles off ticket number] $Me: Alright, I see this is a ticket with an error in a report that was generated? $OL: That's right! I sent this ticket in a week ago, and nothing has been done on it. $Me: Hmm, that's odd. I have an email that was sent to you via our ticketing system an hour after you submitted the ticket. It's requesting the URL for the report that you're seeing this error in? $OL: I never received an email from anyone. It is at this point I pause, and take stock of the situation. Our ticketing system clearly shows an email going to what I have as this user's email address, along with a date and time sent. I decide I want to check things out, catch her in her lie (if she is lying) or fix a problem with her email she hasn't reported yet. At the same time, I can probably get the information the technician was asking for last week. $Me: Well it's very odd you never received an email, could I get your computer name? I'd like to make sure your receiving emails properly. $OL: My computer's name is [Gives me the computer's Asset tag] Internal grumbling… The asset tag isn't the computer name, but I can find the computer name from it. It just takes a little more time. It also helps me know exactly what level of tech savviness the user is. $Me: Ok, You should see your screen flash once or twice as I remote in… Ok, I'm in. May I have control for a moment? $OL: Sure! I disable the user's input capabilities, and navigate to their email. I scroll to the date and time I have from our ticket that this email was sent to them. Sure enough I find the email and it's been marked as read, so they definitely saw it or at least browsed passed it. $Me: Alright, so I found the email that the technician sent to you, do you remember this by any chance? $OL: Oh yeah! But I didn't know what a "URL" is, so I ignored it. I am internally banging my head on the desk at this point, and I don't blame the technician for ignoring the user if the user is going to ignore them first…. $Me: Ok, well let's try and solve that little problem to then. Can you show me the report that you're having issues with? I give her control of the computer back, and she navigates to another email she has received. It has a PDF attachment, a short, one sentence description in the body of the email, with a notice immediately below that. It says "To access this report directly, please use this URL: [insert URL here]." I only get a brief look at this as she immediately opens the PDF attachment, barely looking at the rest of the email. $OL: Here's the report. The issue is with this particular data entry here. (She points to something in the report. The data entry doesn't look different from any of the others so I assume it's something to do with it's value.) $Me: Well I can't immediately assist you myself with this, as I don't have access to the web app that generates this report. (I disable her input capabilities again.) However (I minimize the PDF, and pull the email back up), this right here is the URL that technician was asking for. See how it says "To access this report directly, please use this URL: [insert URL here]." That's what they need. May I forward this information to the technician? $OL: Oh! Really? That's the URL? Well if it'll get them to resolve this, then sure. Why hasn't it been done yet!?! $Me: Well, how about I follow-up with the tech myself to make sure they got this. They should be able to get started with this. Have a good day $OL. hangs up TL:DR – $OL asks why ticket isn't being worked on. Turns out it's because she decided to ignore her technician, and because she doesn't really know how these reports she works on are generated… [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2018 09:29 AM PDT LTL, FTP, SMBv1, etc... A small slice of background: I'm an administrative assistant for an IT Operations team at a large, intensely bureaucatic tax-related company. Details in this and future stories have been changed to protect the innocent. DUN DUN! Cast of Characters:$SqueakyCheese - Your dashing protagonist. Handles incredibly menial tasks; explicitly disallowed by The Rules to provide technical support because of "separation of duties" (italics for internal monologue and stage directions througout) $NewDBA - Fairly self-explanatory - nice person, but very quiet in the short time I've gotten to know them $HelpdeskPeer - Wednesday's on-site helpdesk team member - used to juggle my job in between my predecessor's departure and my arrival in addition to their typical helpdesk duties. Very process-oriented. It's a bleary Wednesday morning, and I'm surfing TFTS and /r/sysadmin while waiting for my AutoHotKey scripts to complete some rote data entry - noting job failures in $OldPOS system...
being ever the glutton for
barista training engaging
One monitor is active - $Doors placed it logically opposite of its physical position. A quick click-and-drag - my elders astounded - one monitor solved. Our awake monitor's counterpart's amber LED led me to the following potential troubles at which to take aim:
Popping up $Doors' or our LAN administrator hadn't bothered to help our new teammate get set up A quick
I said, sincerely. The people in this IT division may not be the most hardware- or OS-astute, but they are the nicest folks. :) One day, my heart may harden, and the little things may wear on me, but I think I'll always love deskside support. But hey, I'm young and naive. I do have (actual) interesting stories, but I figured I'd try out this Markdown stuff with a simpler tale. TL;DR - Veteran helpdesk team member escalates deskside support to IT administrative assistant TL;DRv2 - I have met the Users, and they are IT [link] [comments]  |
| Sometimes color/shape coding is not your friend Posted: 18 Apr 2018 06:58 AM PDT Short one that happened a few days ago. First of all, my girlfriend is pretty good with tech. She's the "sigh let me google that for you" person of us both, and my source of help and information whenever my parents come up with a new Win10 question. Now she finally could replace her dying laptop with a nice gaming rig, and of course she got all the components and built it herself. All I did was inserting the graphics card, and the cable management - to an extent where I really was in danger of being hit by a flying object, if I had said "cable management" one more time. The time came to fire it up, everything worked fine apart from the horrible screen resolution that comes with a freshly set up system... and the second screen that said "no input". This second screen is an older one that served on her laptop previously. By now you all know what happened next... After a short minute of troubleshooting something clicked inside of my head:
After confirming that the screen had a DVI port, rummaging through my cable collection, and handing her a fitting cable, everything worked perfectly, and we got a good laugh out of it. tl;dr: PCIe graphics card overrides the onboard graphic where the second screen was connected. Happens to the best. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Tales From Tech Support. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment