Was reading this and saw Salmons comment here, and it reminded me of a situation I ran into 17 years ago.
https://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,162241.0/topicseen.htmlAlways the son, or the daughter, or the kids. Strange, given that to change the password, you need to know the password. Last time someone (a neighbour) asked me about this (BIOS password, his kids did it, he said), I said "Take it to a Sony Viao dealer with proof of ownership. It's the only way.". That is actually true. He said "Oh.". About six months later I saw his picture on the front page of the local newspaper. 7 years in jail for running a gang of muggers and burglars, mostly junkies. He used to pay them in drugs, relying on their desperation for these to get the goods. Police called his house an "Aladdin's cave" of stolen laptops and plasma TVs. Not accusing. Just saying.
17 years ago my wife intoduced me to a coworker of hers who found out I was into computers and electronics and he wanted to get a better job fixing them to get out of the cleaning business. She had taken up a part time night job where her and others would take the company van and clean businesses when they were closed. She ended up leaving that job because she found a better job but I formed a friendship with this guy who didnt know much about computers and he wanted to know how they worked etc and me enjoying helping people with computers would work for free and teach people in my free time. So he bought a computer from Radio Shack and the one day he was like I want to upgrade my computer to be able to burn CD's. So I opened the box and took out the drive that he said he bought and installed it as well as the Roxio Easy CD Creator software that came bundled with the CD-R drive, and didnt think anything of it.
He then said that this one business was throwing away a bunch of computer stuff and if I could come over and check out what he trash picked. I looked at the software and pieces and parts. Most of it 5 years old or older in age so it appeared that it was true that he said it was thrown away because obsolete. Well he had no use for stuff he couldnt use and so he said I could have whatever I wanted as for its just trash. So I accepted to take the obsolete parts since free is too good to pass up at the time and I might find an older system that can use a part as an upgrade such as a better Pentium MMX 200Mhz CPU to upgrade from a Pentium 133 etc. So I accepted the obsolete parts and took those home.
The one day he said to please come over he trash picked more stuff. I came over and looked it all over and it was a mix of RAM sticks. One of the sticks was a newer stick that could upgrade his newer computer. I said the RAM is probably bad, but we can install it and see what happens. So Installed the RAM stick bringing him from 64MB to 128MB RAM and it was testing out as healthy. I assumed someone made a mistake and threw away a good RAM stick. The older RAM sticks I once again got to take home with me which were SIMMs and DIMMs for 286,386,486 computers and EDO DIMMs for Pentiums.
Then surprise surprise one day he knocks on my front door and says he is going to jail. I said for what, he said theft. He needs all the stuff back that he gave to me. I thought I was going to throw up. I was in such shock that I accepted without knowing a bunch of obsolete parts that were stolen property. I gave him everything he gave me, and he turned that into the police.
Next was questioning by the police asking if I had any involvement in his thefts. I had absolutely no clue and no involvement and he was caught on camera stealing. After thinking I was going to go to jail for a crime I didnt have anything to do with other than being a stupid fool who accepted free obsolete computer parts, I was told that I might have to appear in court.
The guy ended up confessing to everything writing a statement that he was the only one in on this and told the police that I really had no clue, he was then sent to jail for 3 years because as I also found out that he had a prior record of theft in another state where he came from as well as assaulting an officer of the law, and I was left with a very important lesson learned.
It is the worst feeling in the world to feel like your going to go to prison and you did absolutely nothing wrong and receiving stolen property in any form can be a crime with punishment. I was very fortunate that law enforcement saw that I had no involvement in any of it. At the time before this all came to light I almost posted some stuff on ebay, but didnt. If I had done that then I would likely have been thrown in jail for selling stolen property even though I had absolutely no clue it was stolen.
I am very cautious when accepting free stuff after that. I use to have index cards posted in businesses offering free recycling of computers and parts. I no longer do that that way. These days I only accept computers and parts from clients or people who I really know well, where I know that it was their computer parts and some criminals dont try to dump computers or parts onto me as a way to get rid of hot obsolete stuff and pin me in on whatever they have going on.
BE VERY VERY CAREFUL WHO YOU HELP & WHEN ACCEPTING FREE STUFF
