Is This Evil? Ethical question ...

[RoyGBiv]

As a sideline I sometimes fix computers for people, which usually means cleaning viruses, spyware, etc. and only very rarely includes anything I would call actual work. I don't advertise or anything. I just do it for people I know or who have been referred to me by people I know, and I don't charge much. It basically funds my personal obsession with constantly tweaking my own computers.

So, this guy I sorta know, whom I hate mostly due to his politics (thinks Shrub is the best President EVAH) but also just because he's generally an ass, told me his computer was shutting down on its own, i.e. a hard shutdown, which tends to indicate something hardware related. He's convinced he has a virus or that someone is messing with him using something like a virus. I agreed to look at the computer, for a price, and would fix it for another price depending on what I found, which is also higher than what I'd charge someone I don't dislike.

I took it home on Thursday and started it up. I couldn't get it to repeat the problem he said he was having, so I started looking for non-standard problems and found one. His power chord has a cut in it. I wasn't using his power chord during my testing, so I changed and started using it, and sure enough, when I moved it slightly, it lost power and shut down. Problem solved.

However, during the previous testing I ran a virus check and found he had a trojan on his computer, a key-logger in fact, and that this key-logger is saving all his keystrokes by saving them to a file that it e-mails to someone on a regular basis. That e-mail address belongs to his wife, which seems to indicate this trojan was placed there deliberately for some purpose I don't care to question.

I am returning the computer in the morning, charging what I said I would plus the cost of a new power cable, and I haven't touched the trojan, nor am I planning on telling him about it. I did what I said I'd do, figure out the hard shutdown problem and fix it if possible.

Is this unethical?

[Random_Australian]

1. What precisely did you agree to do for him? Fix the hardware problem

or fix his computer?

What did he think you had agreed to do?

[RoyGBiv]

4. The hard shutdown ...

All I told him I'd do is try to figure out what was causing the hard shutdown and fix that if possible.

The reason I'm questioning myself is that I typically don't stop there, which he probably knows. (OTOH, he also knows I'm cheaper than Computer Nerdz or whatever, which was more likely the driving factor in him asking me.) I'm like a car mechanic who gives the vehicle the once-over no matter the reason the car was brought in and informs the customer what else is wrong and gives the option of fixing it. I *might* have done that anyway had I not realized the e-mail address to which the information was being sent belonged to his wife. I also don't want to stick my foot into the middle of a domestic squabble, particularly one involving people I don't like personally.

But still ...

[Random_Australian]

5. A suitable analagy: If you saw his wife watching him stroll in the park,

would you interfere?

[RoyGBiv]

7. Good point ...

Thanks.

[LeftyMom]

2. Staying out of spousal issues whenever possible is a wise idea

You did what you were hired to do and in this case volunteering more info would likely create more problems than it would solve.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. Would you tell him if you didn't sorta hate him?

I would recommend removing the trojan and saying nothing. Then if his wife wants to put it back, she can, but you aren't left with an ethical dilemma

[RoyGBiv]

6. That's the other option ...

But here's what happens.

I've done something like this before for a friend. It didn't involve exactly these circumstances. It was just a piece of software I removed that was also functioning as spyware and bogging down the system heavily. Friend wanted it streamlined and removing that was the biggest part of it. He just told me to do whatever was necessary.

However, when he got it back and the wife realized her favorite piece of spyware was gone, I got a call from her accusing me of all sorts of weird things. When I tried to explain what I'd done and why, she just called me stupid and took out her frustrations on her husband, saying that I had broken their computer.

This joint ownership thing can be annoying in these circumstances.

[saltpoint]

8. Is it possible to tell him when you return the computer that

you believe you fixed the problem, that it was the cut in the cord, and that you felt fairly certain that was it,

but... you would caution him about the same or another problem that he might want to investigate. You are a competent analyst of such machines, and as regards function, you recommend to him that he investigate possible spyware, suggesting only that spyware can sometimes cause malfunction in a computer system.

Then, he is alerted by someone who knows computers, and can decide on his own whether or not to pursue it further.

If he does not pursue, you have not failed to disclose. You haven't taken sides and yet you don't want him blind-sided.

His wife, if she loaded that in his computer, undertakes the risk that her putting it there might be discovered.

[laheina]

9. Ethics isn't my background, but here goes...

If you were hired to fix the computer, and the trojan isn't impairing the computer's performance in any way, and he didn't explicitly ask you to look for such software that wasn't interfering with the functionality of his computer, then you aren't obligated to tell him about it by the terms of your agreement.

Beyond that, you don't know *why* his wife put that software on his machine. He may be doing something completely immoral, and you're having told him of its existence may do more harm than good. Maybe it will endanger his wife's safety. :shrug:

And if he has no way of necessarily knowing if you saw it or not, then he can't blame you for it later.

Ya' think?

[LaurenG]

10. I'd take it off and say you removed a trojan.

He suspected it had a virus "or something". Charge him and leave at that. If you were doing this for me I bet you'd take it off. Just don't tell him all the details. She is a spy, he suspects something. You found it, either tell him what you found and leave it or take it off and let it alone.

I think if he presses for answers you might have to tell him. A lie by omission is still a lie.

[Heidi]

11. Before you return the computer, call him and tell him what you found,

and what you'll charge to remove it. You will have done the right thing and been compensated for it. (You might also mention that you plan to donate the proceeds from your work to the Democratic candidate of your choice. :evilgrin: )

[Dangerously Amused]

12. Let it go.

You did your job. You fixed the problem. He's happy. Don't stir up a hornet's nest in their private matters. She may have a legitimate reason for spying on him. He may have a legitimate reason for doing whatever she thinks is wrong. Let the matter play itself out as it will. Maybe nothing will ever come of it.

On the other hand, if you force something to come of it... you will have another angry wife on your hands. It may turn ugly. There may be legal issues of invasion of privacy involved, both criminal and civil. You really wanna testify in those matters?

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

20. LOL, while I agree with what you said, as a whole,

I was just gonna put in my two cents that there is NEVER a legitimate reason to spy on someone without their knowledge.

[petronius]

13. What would you do if the client was someone you didn't know at all?

I think there is an argument that you don't need to tell him about the keylogger, since you did fix the shut-down problem. However, this part of your post:

"He's convinced he has a virus or that someone is messing with him using something like a virus. I agreed to look at the computer, for a price, and would fix it for another price depending on what I found"

implies to me that he believes that you agreed to give him a more complete report on the condition of his system. In fact, if he thinks "someone" is messing with him, I'd bet he already suspects the monitoring by his wife, and just didn't want to give you all the details. So, I'd lean toward you having an ethical responsibility toward telling him (which I'd imagine is what you'd do for a total stranger).

The only real balance toward not telling him is if you suspect there is a danger to the wife - you may want to send an e-mail to the address used by the logger a day or so before you tell the guy.

[RoyGBiv]

15. I see your point, but ...

The thing is this. I don't look at him as a "client." He's some guy who had a problem I agreed to try to fix, and I did fix that particular problem. When I say "not a client" what I mean is that this isn't a business, which is what my initial comments were intended to convey. The one and only reason I started charging for this at all was that after building a system for someone at work and fixing another person's computer for nothing but the cost of parts, I started having every random individual in the company who knew of me ask to help them. I'm not exaggerating too much by saying I would have had to quit my job to have time to do it all. The final straw was someone who had a completely trashed system infected with, count 'em, 11 viruses, one of which was a particularly nasty bugger that took my most of a Sunday afternoon to exterminate. And when he got his system back, he was pissed, at me, and let me know he was pissed, at me, that his system didn't run faster. (It was a Pentium III ~500MHz with 128megs and a 10gig (5400rpm) hard drive trying to run XP Professional. Just wasn't a lot I could do to speed that mess up.) So, after that, I started quoting prices to people up front and detailing what I was going to do before I did it if it involved anything other than the "look at it" cost, and this cut down on the nonsense and leeches.

I know I'm skirting a fine line here, but I do make clear I am not Class A certified. I do this in my spare time. I may or may not be able to help, but I'm not filling up my living room with random people's computers and spending every spare moment on them. I enjoy fiddling with computers, but not *that* much. I enjoy helping people, but again, not *that* much.

A better question might be whether I'd tell a friend. Yes, I would. This guy isn't a friend, or even someone I want to know outside of work. The bit about him suspecting a virus problem came out during his rambling. (He goes on and on and on, and I just smile and nod.) What I told him was that I'd try to fix the shutdown issue, and I told him it was very unlikely that the problem he described was caused by a virus, or any software issue. And I said nothing more than that except that I couldn't guarantee I could fix it, but if it were a power supply, memory, or heat issue, one of which is what I suspected, I'd let him know what it would cost to fix.

After all that, what I eventually did, taking into account the advice here, was this: To address his concern about a virus, I downloaded the free version of AVG and placed an icon for it on his desktop. I told him I didn't want to leave any newly installed software on his system without letting him know first, so I just left that there to install if he wanted, and I explained how to do it, get the updates, and run a system scan. If he does, AVG will find the keylogger, and it'll be up to him to deal with it.

[crispini]

16. Nice solution!

Very smoothly done. Bravo.

[RoyGBiv]

18. Thanks ...

This was most directly suggested to me by Old Crusoe above, in particular the bit about suggesting he might want to look into it further but leave it up to him to do so. And that was my goal here, to take myself out of the situation.

I wouldn't have asked for advice had I not felt a little bit dirty about just leaving a virus on someone's computer. Despite not thinking of the people I do this for as "clients" per se, I do try to approach it with a degree of professionalism. But what I've realized about working on computers is that it's not like working on a car. People leave their lives on these things. It's like being a car mechanic who dabbles in psychology, and there demons lie.

An interesting side-note to this whole thing. The computer already had a virus scanner on it, some package from Norton that included a firewall, virus scanner, and various other things. It never caught the keylogger. Of course its definitions file was a year old, but this wasn't an exotic program.

[petronius]

17. That is a kick-ass solution - well done!

:toast:

One thing to think about is what you'll say when he comes back to you after running the virus scan. He'll probably figure out that you knew all along about the logger, since running a virus scan was probably one of the first things you did...

[RoyGBiv]

19. Thanks ...

I'm not sure he's that smart, though. Not the brightest bulb in the lamp. :-)

Still, you have a point. Hopefully I headed that off with the way I told him about putting AVG there..."Oh, by the way ... since you mentioned you wondered about a virus, I put AVG on there for you to install ..."

[bridgit]

14. ppfftt, whahaha; no...no, i'm sorry but...

:rofl: