My Turn - Achieving the American Dream

by Jonathan Williams

  Chapter 6

  “Porn and Yoga”

  “Hey Tony, what are you working on?”

  “The usual. You know that girl Sandy?”

  “That tall, pretty brunette up in clinical?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Take a look at this.”

  Tony shows Chris a website that she was visiting. It’s a website on how to meet rich, older men. Tony is one of the more experienced Helpdesk Technicians.

  “Oh, you have access as well?” Chris says laughing.

  “Yep, we all have access,” he replies. “We get to reap the benefits. Tim is going out with Maria because of this friken tool. But hey, management is the one that wanted it. They’re doing the same thing. They inquire about activities for certain employees so I might as well.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Chris knows they have the system. Most companies have these systems, and it’s one of the databases they maintain. They are able to track the majority of websites that employees visit. These types of systems can tell you quite a bit about a person. And, of course, there’s an exclusion list which Paul’s login is coincidently found on. Who knows what he’s surfing? It’s interesting to see how he runs things. The guy would cross a person in a second to advance himself. Chris can only imagine what Paul’s personal life is like.

  Chris is now one of them. He’s not upfront with close to half of what he says, but this is what’s expected of him. He’s already in deep. So what harm would it be if he takes a peek at what Debbie is surfing? He’s not making much progress via the normal channels with her. She’s an attractive girl and also likes to travel. Besides, like Tony said, it sounds like quite a few folks are estaking anyway.

  Estaking involves tracking every move an employee makes on the computer. It can include logging every keystroke from websites visited, chat logs, personal email, financial information, dating sites and even medical history. Per upper management orders, they’re estaking a couple of people, and then there are some IT employees who are estaking on their own. The degree as to how much data is collected varies.

  “Alright, well have fun. I need to finish up some things.” Chris walks out the Helpdesk door and to his office. What the hell, he thinks to himself. Why not take a peek and at least see what Debbie and Sandy are surfing?

  He sits down at his desk to give it some more thought. He knows he’ll be taking it to another level. And like he’s always heard, “it’s easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow.” But everyone’s doing it, so why shouldn’t he? He logs in. On today’s logs, it looks like Sandy is looking for a cooking class and Debbie is planning a trip to Costa Rica. His heart is beating faster than normal. He only checks a few records related to these two girls then quickly logs out. This is his first time actually estaking someone and it’s exhilarating, to say the least. He’s looking at people’s personal information and they don’t know. Granted, he feels a little odd looking at it but figures the more he does it, the more comfortable it becomes, which he finds out later is true.

  Chris feels that he and Debbie already have things in common so any extra information would certainly come in handy. The more intel you have, the better decisions you can make. Befriending girls in this manner was to prove more fruitful than working the bar scene or any online dating scene. eHarmony boasts of introducing members that have things in common, but when you see what people search on the web, you’re given a window into what they’re really like. Chris has tried meeting girls at bars and on online dating sites, yet the whole time he’s literally had everything at his fingertips. He can befriend anyone in the company, man or woman. Do a little research on Costa Rica and he would have another thing in common with Debbie.

  Like Tony said, Tim, a network engineer, is going out with Maria because of the information he collected. Chris hopes to do the same with Debbie, depending on what he discovers. He wants to see how things are going with Tim. Maybe he has some pointers that haven’t crossed his mind.

  “Dude, I heard you’re going out with Maria.” Chris walks over to Tim’s desk to get some more info.

  “Yeah, who told you that?” he says laughing.

  “I just heard it.”

  “A little hottie, eh?”

  “Yeah, she is. Not sure why she’s going out with you,” Chris says with a smirk. Tim knows what he’s getting at.

  “Information is priceless, my friend. Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.” They walk outdoors to finish their conversation.

  “I can see that. And all this just from web surfing?”

  “Well, maybe a little more than that. But yes, that had a lot to do with it.” Now it’s his turn to have the smirk.

  “Dude you didn’t, did you?”

  “I did,” he says laughing. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t. But man, that’s awesome.”

  “Dude, it’s so easy. Look at me. I’m going out with that girl. I’m going out with Maria. She’s in love with me. Crazy.”

  “I can see that. What do you think about Debbie?”

  “Oh yeah. Hot. Though I don’t think you need to go to the extreme I did.”

  “What about Sandy?”

  “Well, Tony has dibs on her. He’s been looking at her for the past couple of months. Been estaking that bitch for quite some time.”

  “Got it. I guess if you are going to do it, might as well go all the way. I already looked at Debbie’s web browsing.”

  “Nice.”

  “I may need some help on this.”

  “Of course, brother. But think twice before putting a keyboard-logger on. It gets addicting.”

  “So how do you like working here so far?”

  “Kind of odd, seems like security is at the bottom of the list.”

  “Yep, it sure is.”

  There’s truth to this. The second day Tim is on campus, he finds a DVD in his cube and decides to take a peek. He loads the DVD, and there’s a word document in it containing all the firewall passwords, router passwords, local admin passwords, along with various other passwords in plain text. Doing this is not good practice, but it’s the norm at Biokinz. Tim puts out his cigarette, and they give themselves high-fives before going back in.

  Tim installed a keyboard-logger on Maria’s computer. As the name suggests, a keyboard-logger logs all of your keystrokes. After a little analysis of the log file, personal emails, bank accounts, medical records, and such, can be accessed. All of this information, coupled with web surfing, the person estaking will then have a complete picture of the target.

  This is Chris’s next step. They’re going to put a keyboard-logger on Debbie’s computer. She is Chris’s mark and the quicker he starts estaking, the better.

  The next day, Tim and Chris go to lunch. While they’re eating, he looks at his pager and starts laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Well, Erick is surfing porn again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I get paged every time someone accesses an adult site. And our boy Erick is a frequent visitor.”

  “Oh geez, I never knew.”

  “I’ve seen some disgusting sites that he has visited. Sites that can land you in prison.”

  “Child porn?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re kidding,” Chris says.

  “Nope,” Tim replies assertively.

  “Geez, awful. Makes you wonder about people.”

  “It sure does.”

  “I take it everyone in IT knows.”

  “Yeah, more or less.”

  “More tea?” the waitress asks.

  “No thank you,” Chris replies.

  “No thanks,” Tim also says.

  “Geez that is amazing.” They wrap up their lunch and head back.

  Here they are peering into people’s lives unnoticed. Though Chris feels bad at first, over time it becomes downright comical. He sure wouldn’t want an entire company knowing that he was surfing porn at work. Not sure
what the market would think either if they found out that their lead scientist is surfing porn at the office, let alone child porn.

  Like so many, once you take a sip from the well of desire, you want more. In terms of estaking, the more information a person collects, the more they want to do it. For instance, Sandy purchased a book called “Yoga Retreats.” Tony is so obsessed with her that he goes out and purchases the same book. The day she comes down to the Helpdesk for a computer-related issue, he conveniently brings it out and places it on his desk so she can see it.

  “Hey, I’m reading the same book,” she says excitedly.

  “Oh really? Great book! Are you into yoga?”

  “Yeah, I go about four times a week.” By this time, Tony knows her schedule from personal emails as well as the name of her gym, which he retrieved from her online banking sessions.

  “Yeah I started to get into it. I just need to go a little more often. I was even thinking about a yoga retreat to jump start me. Where do you do yoga?”

  “That’s great. Up in the city where I live.”

  “Oh that’s cool. Okay, you are all set,” he says as he hands the laptop to her.

  “Thanks Tony.”

  “Yep, no problem.”

  The ice has been broken! Chris asks Tony if he even cares about yoga and, of course, he replies with a big hell no.

  It turns out that Sandy is looking for a friend to go on the retreat with her, but most of her friends can’t make it due to other commitments. Tony knows the resort she’s been looking into, and it’s in Thailand. He tells Chris that he also picked up a travel book on the country and has always wanted to visit. He ends up going on a date with her just a few weekends later.

  This is always a big step. First it starts with work functions, such as meetings, then a lunch, and maybe an after-work drink if things start to progress. The big break, though, comes when a date is set up over the weekend. It’s when absolutely nothing is tied to work.

  After Tony’s date, they go to lunch, and it seems like things are going well. He also starts doing yoga at a local gym. Chris asks if he is going to go to Thailand, and he says that Sandy has postponed her trip. Tony mentions that if things are still going well a couple of months from now that he will probably join her if she picks a new date. Even though the relationship started off as unconventional and deceitful, it’s still working. And, even if it only lasts a couple of dates, they are at least memorable ones.

  During this period, Chris is teaching tennis on the weekends. The tennis director always told him not to sleep with any of the students. It’s hard to resist, however, as some of the ladies are good-looking and flirtatious. But he’s right. It would only complicate things, and if something goes wrong, it would be an uncomfortable situation. The same rules apply to the corporate world but many employees are breaking them.