For reasons I can't remember, I was able to send emails through the company's Windows email server under any name that I wanted.
I know of several fortune 100 companies that still allow this due to the way they set up email protection with o365 and Proofpoint, ironically. not naming them. I've done similar pranks and got by with the skin of my teeth but would not recommend people do this early in their career especially if leadership are sensitive to embarrassment.
> especially if leadership are sensitive to embarrassment.
Funny thing is that I cleared my prank with Peter Sachs because he was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, but he told me to go for it and he thought it was hilarious.
I didn't clear it with Jim Collinsworth because he was a bit of a jokester himself so I (incorrectly) assumed he'd have no problem with it.
Having approval from one of them would be quite the saving grace.
I had a CTO tell me to fill a cubicle with quick drying cement after a prank went wrong but I stalled him long enough to cool down. I knew the building management company would have been furious had I followed orders. The CSO had pranked the CTO with a dongle that opens excel and slowly types "I know what you were doing..."
the building company would be more than furious. you could lose your lease over this and pay damages.
next time recommend using expanding insulation foam instead, but first cover everything with big sheets of plastic. the victim will still have a hell of a time getting rid of the foam. that stuff hardens...
Oh trust me I know. This was CBRE and they are cantankerous and contentious on good days.
Some jokesters are surprisingly picky about which side of the joke they're on.
I showed a new to IT guy about open relays and he was about to send an email from the CEO but thinking better, he sent the joke email from "[email protected]" (real name instead obviously) - the amount of people STILL thinking it was the real thing was embarrassing.
>leadership are sensitive to embarrassment
Or they don't want distractions that are too costly.
To your point the incident I described took several windows admins a while to find the USB prank. They thought we had a live extortion hack in progress and that was about the time they called me into it.