Private Messages

[broncovet]

Someone asked if we would post a list of people "who answer Vets questions" via email or pm.  

If you would like me to answer a private message, you need to understand:

(ITS better to ask in the public forum, then more eyes will see it and you often get a better answer, but, I know there are things you dont want to share with the whole world.  I get that.) 

1.  I do not "live" on hadit, have many other things going on, and may not even answer your question promptly.  I may stop doing PM's at any time, at my discretion.  

If you can not be patient enough to wait on my answer please dont PM me.  Ask on the public forum if its an emergency, and you need help right away.  

2.  I can not answer all questions.  Some I just dont have the expertise in that area.  

3.  Be prepared for an answer "you may not want to hear".  You dont have to follow my advice, but dont be suprised if it does not work out well for you.  

4.  I wont suggest you do thing illegal or immoral, such as lying or sending fraudulent documents, so dont ask me. 

    To PM me, go to the upper right corner where it shows a picture of an envelope.  That is the PM.  Type my name "broncovet".  

    Others please respond if you are willing to PM Vets.  Most hadit members have enabled PM's, Berta apparently does not do PM's.  

Edited December 12, 2020 by broncovet

[brokensoldier244th]

LOL. Occasionally, but I try to keep it within reason. eyeballing something for someone occasionally- no problem. Grabbing a C file? Nope the nope.

(General royal "you" in effect)

1. I can't because our computers are secure and through a VPN that monitors, among other things, file size. So, I can't just email gobs of stuff to myself, plus Outlook scans for recognizable patterns like Soc #, known file numbers, etc, and only lets you send encrypted. Problem is the only people that have the decryption algorithm are other employees. If I can't encrypt the file it gets blocked, and logged, and I may or may not get an email from our Director of Infosec or the PII/PHI coordinator asking what im doing.

2. thumbdrives- NO GO. As soon as one gets plugged in Ill get a call within about 10 minutes or a very stern email CC:d to my boss and a few other people asking WHAT was I doing. Working from home, this has happened a few times at the beginning because I had my personal machine and my work machine on top of each other because I hadn't converted a space yet. 2 stern phone calls and potentially a censure SF50 was enough to make me take a weekend re-arranging my basement. (See that scene from the movie "the Recruit" or, pretty much any caper movie where info has to be stolen off a secured machine- aside from movie magic, or equipment and software that I don't have but do know how to use, its not happening and not worth it to me to risk it)

3. Drag/Drop to Gdrive/DropBox, etc- nope, blocked on the network. 

4. Screenshots on my phone - Um....no. I don't want your data as much as you do, and phone pics of screens turn out barely readable most of the time anyway. 

5. I can't remotely print- it would go to the office anyway, where I am not. I can't map a printer to their network through a VPN either, without a special token that I don't officially need for my job

6. Printing to PDF- Can do, but see 1-3 above. No way to move them. 

 

Thats the realities of working on a gov system. This is why data thieves know to just steal the whole laptop anyway, and hope that someone left their PIV encryption card plugged in. Its just easier that way, and at least they can harvest whatever might be stored locally.