I’m at the end of a settlement agreement with my employer, they’re really ratcheting up the pressure with IT issues. I’m not allowed to delete anything off my laptop.

There is some stuff on there that are personal stuff which I basically used at the time as I didn’t have office on my mac.

If I delete them would they ever know when they get the laptop back?

Their PC knowledge is pants and don’t have a network manager, they outsource everything to a local company who advise over the phone. The laptop is ancient and they’re not very savvy, but neither am I and don’t want to leave stuff on it or be suspected of deleting work related stuff.

Similarly, can I copy the email inbox? We’re disputing stuff and the conversations regarding the disputes are by email, if I hand it back without some copy of them then my defence is gone….

I think you already know what you need to do.

Almost certainly the emails are on the server as well as your laptop. Deleting them on your laptop won’t remove them from the backup tapes (or however it is they do backups/data retention).

If I delete them would they ever know when they get the laptop back?

Yes, depending on how Exchange is configured. However I’d have no qualms about doing this myself so long as this is personal stuff with no bearing on your settlement situation (remember to delete from the trash folder too).

Similarly, can I copy the email inbox? We’re disputing stuff and the conversations regarding the disputes are by email, if I hand it back without some copy of them then my defence is gone..

In my company, you would be clearly breaking company policy to do that and it would be viewed seriously. But again, I’d do this if I felt it necessary to defend myself. I would at least print any relevant emails out.

Emails – copy them to a .pst file or you can drag to desktop and save as .msg.

Neither of which would stand up as evidence in a court, but useful nonetheless.

Deleting – shift+delete bypasses the recycle bin iirc.

If it’s Outlook you could create a PST file on a USB stick and copy your mailbox to it. That shouldn’t be too easily traced, if you were allowed a local home printer you could print off the relevant mails. Work printers may be setup to track usage. Forwarding mails to home could be traced via Exchange.

Same with personal stuff move it to USB, in theory files moved would still be on the files system after deleting, even after the recycle bin the OS just flags the file as deleted – it’s still there and recoverable for a while. If you really want to cover your arse and you were allowed some personal use of the laptop. Ask for a witnessed meeting where you can identify and remove the personal files before signing back the laptop.

(I work in IT not legal so the above may be technically OK but not the best advice for the legal side!)

One of the reasons I religiously try and stick to keeping work and home separate when it comes to phones and laptops 🙁

Forward all the relevant emails to your private email.

jimdubleyou – Member
Deleting – shift+delete bypasses the recycle bin iirc.

Plenty of tools to undelete, though if the laptop is on a roaming profile then chances are your desktop profile, documents, settings etc are all being synced to a server and that’s being backed up.

Learnt long ago to keep personal life out of business. I use my own phone and tablet for personal stuff. Office PCs purely for office, even when I’m working at places where half the staff are Facebooking and even playing games on work PCs. As a contract I try to keep more of a professional image anyway and try not to get sucked into office life.

If you want to securely delete files from your laptop you need extra software – here’s a free utility that (importantly!) doesn’t need installing:

http://portableapps.com/apps/security/eraser-portable

And another vote for printing the relevant emails out, rather than sending them to another mailbox or copying them.

…it would be a shame if a cup of coffee were to fall over close to it.

As Jim says, using a PST is the way to do it and have it be difficult to trace. The easier option is just to forward the emails to a personal email address but that would be logged by the Exchange server and might be an issue if it’s against company policy.

Way too vague a question to answer with any reliability, and we can only speculate on what they’d ‘know’ or be able to work out.

Define “personal stuff” – emails / documents / applications / goat porn / what? What email client are you using? What backend email server does it connect to (everyone’s assuming Exchange but it could be anything)? Etc etc.

EDIT – sorry, I’ve just seen the subject line! So yes, as others have said, export your inbox to .PST. Do it directly to a USB pendrive, then it’ll leave less of a trace on the HDD. Exchange may have an archive of emails or a message log depending on how it’s been set up, again we’d be guessing.

I’d clone the hard disk for starters if it were me, then I had my own copy of everything for evidence purposes. I’d expect an original disk in an “ancient” laptop to be on the verge of suddenly experiencing catastrophic failure and tragically losing all its data.

If your IT policy does not forbid you to copy emails, or make backups, then do that asap. If you think that once they have your laptop then some might get deleted to make arguing hard, do it anyway, or take screenshots of the summaries so that you can identify what they destroy.

If you want to go nuclear copy what you want from it then dban the disk then drop the laptop on the floor from a height then pop it in the dishwasher, “sorry it slipped out of my hands and fell in a puddle as I walked across the car park” but it would have to be some serious hardcore grumble you were worried about them seeing to go that far.

If it’s innocuous personal stuff just shift delete it and leave the work stuff well alone.

I can see them not wanting you deleting work stuff (but data on a laptop should be considered at risk and backed up elsewhere anyway) but personal stuff?
If you delete files, depending on how hard they look, they can see what you deleted and recover it. dban should wipe all traces of everything from all but the most persistent of investigators but it does the whole disk not individual files.

<edit> not heard of mogrims eraser before (I’m normally more interested in recovery than deletion), no doubt better than just deleting it but I would be surprised if there weren’t recoverable trace files on other parts of the disk.

If you’re worried about the opposition ‘accidentally’ deleting things that you want to rely on for evidence then an encrypted copy on the disk with read only access may be the way to go. If PC office has the facility then you could print everything you want to pdf with password security onto a USB stick or into the cloud on Onedrive or Dropbox.

As above and clone and also create a vmware virtual machine before you hand it back. Fire up the quattro

Something like this if you want light touch ( i’ve not needed to do this)
https://www.howtoforge.com/converting-a-vmware-image-to-a-physical-machine

Otherwise I have used tools to do a straight p2v

I’d expect an original disk in an “ancient” laptop to be on the verge of suddenly experiencing catastrophic failure and tragically losing all its data.

I can hear it clicking from here.

DBAN is the traditional tool for making sure the contents aren’t coming back, once you have a copy of course.

There’s a lot of embuggerance (©Terry Pratchett) detailed above.

I’d expect an original disk in an “ancient” laptop to be on the verge of suddenly experiencing catastrophic failure and tragically losing all its data.
I can hear it clicking from here.

DBAN is the traditional tool for making sure the contents aren’t coming back, once you have a copy of course.

brassneck and cougar nailed it.

DBAN FTW (if you can’t get hold of Blanco).

The issue is really one of chain of custody. If you want the ‘evidence’ to stand up in court, then you’ll need a way of getting it off that preserves it properly. If you just want copies to refer to, then exporting the mailbox to a .pst on Dropbox is fine.

I might also suggest a rubber panel beating hammer. Run the HDD externally and hit it repeatedly with said hammer. It will crash and break, but there will not be marks. Or use a heat gun.

Once you’ve reached the settlement, why does it matter? Sign the document, walk away. OK, you might want to delete some personal stuff. But copies of relevant emails…that’s history.

Once you’ve reached the settlement, why does it matter? Sign the document, walk away. OK, you might want to delete some personal stuff. But copies of relevant emails…that’s history.

I’ve signed my part, it’s now over to them to sign theirs. They’re coming tomorrow to pick it all up. I think if they see that i’ve deleted stuff they’ll refuse to sign the agreement or devalue it.

I’ve been fighting tooth and nail for 2 weeks for a payout equivalent to three months pay, despite me earning commissions equivalent to six months pay alone. Their solicitor has absolutely railroaded mine, despite me having a huge case for unfair dismissal it’s simply down to who has the most to throw at solicitors, which is where I lose.

Not happy with asking me to leave at christmas despite being 150% of target (no performance issues or gross misconduct etc) and no warnings of such. I just feel that having copies of emails regarding certain aspects of the business may help me if they do indeed decide not to sign and then compensate me.

Just bloody well forward/copy/etc now and to hell with it.
Rule no.1 – look after no.1
And go after the commissions if you can prove it (emails 😉 )

Before you delete anything, clone the disk!

( Just in case the original one happens to stop working, when you ask for evidence from it… )

http://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-to-upgrade-your-existing-hard-drive-in-under-an-hour/

I just feel that having copies of emails regarding certain aspects of the business may help me if they do indeed decide not to sign and then compensate me.

Archive your emails into a .pst file on a usb drive (but don’t tell them you’ve done it).

Should things get acrimonious, you may be granted access to your emails. From previous experience, what this meant was: “You tell us the date and time you sent the email and to whom, and we will supply you with a printed copy (legal fee of £XXX payable)”. It helps if you have a really good memory to be able to furnish these details 😉

(Oh, and delete your personal stuff and run CCleaner or something to remove cookies, saved passwords, browsing history, etc. and stop them un-deleting files – the sooner the better, as hopefully the “cleaned” computer will get backed up a few times before you hand it back)