I have an employee whom has copied my data files (QA4) on his home
computer and I wish some sort of executeable command that when
downloaded would cause just QA4 files to be erased from the
unauthorized user.

---

Clarification of Question by daguy-ga on 25 Jun 2002 07:57 PDT

I did not stop to think about the legal issues and after talking to
several people, I realize that it would be an illegal act and I would
not ask anyone to
do that.  Thanks for the responses.

daguy-ga

If you are searching for a command that will erase files from somebody
elses computer (legally), I think you're out of luck. Even if the
files are your property, I'd suggest talking to a lawyer before taking
this step. A simple DOS batch file would do it, but anybody with the
any sophistication would be able to undelete the files at a later time
- such as if the employee took the computer to a tech and said "get me
back these files". It also assumes that whoever has copied the files
hasn't made multiple copies. There are many ways to protect the files
on your computer, but the best of these is simply limiting physical
access. If you've followed the recent news stories about espionage in
the US, you've seen that even highly classified files can't be
protected from people who have full access (password, encryption,
etc...) to them.

Although technically possible, it is illegal.

You should have made sure that (s)he could not get hold of these files
in the first place.

But it has happened, and apperently your relationship with your
(former?) employee is not good enough to just ask him/her nicely to
remove all files. So, as from a practical point of view you best
re-assess the importance of the whole issue, and then make a choice
out of two:
- forget about the whole issue or,
- sue the (then definitively former) employee and make the judge
promise him/her to delete all file and not to use or distribute them
ever. In this case you should get yourself a decent laywer of course.

The last option does not garuantee that (s)he actually deletes them or
won't use them in anyway, but it creates liability and paves the way
for further legal actions if you do suffer damage when (s)he does not
obey the judge's decission.

Regards,
Jeroen

What you're looking for is something called a "Trojan Horse." That is,
a program that when inadvertently downloaded is executed. Without
cheating (technically) I can't think of a single downloadable command.
What is needed is a program to seek out the QA4 files and then delete
them. Note that even if this were legal, most anti-virus software now
detects attachments or downloads of anything that appears to be
executable (e.g., files with the extensions ".exe" or ".bat" or
whatever). If this person has any current such software, your Trojan
Horse would likely be detected. So, in addition to the legal arguments
posited by morris-ga and jvdongen-ga, you probably wouldn't even be
able to do this in the first place.