Re: Corporate policy question - Personal Laptops

["Svetoslav P. Chukov" <svetoslav.chukov () gmail com>]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Svetoslav P. Chukov
<svetoslav.chukov () gmail com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Tom Yarrish <cdtdelta () gmail com> wrote:
> > Hey all,
> > Needed some advice on a corporate policy issue.  If an employee has a
> > personal laptop in the office, and that employee is terminated in the
> > process of a merger, can the company wipe the hard drive of the
> > personal computer before it's returned to that employee?  Here's the
> > scenario:
> >
> > Our company is going through a merger, and through the rounds of
> > "integration" of the two companies, employees that are let go from the
> > IT department are escorted out of the building immediately, and not
> > allowed to return. Their manager packs up their personal affects and
> > ships it to them.  In one case, the employee had some personal laptops
> > in their office, and wants them back (obviously).  Are we allowed to
> > wipe the hard drive of that personal laptop before giving it back to
> > the employee?
> >
> > I'm trying to determine if this is even legal or not, so I'm not sure
> > where to look for advice.
> >
> > Thanks ahead of time....

I would recommend you to contact your lawyer. The laptops are personal
and when they are allowed to be in that office then some man in charge
did allow that. But that laptops are personal so all the data
available on them is personal too. If you delete the laptop's data
then you may go in a legal nightmare and could be forced to compensate
the damages to the laptop's owner.

Assume the following situation:
The laptop contains some personal data as well as legally purchased
applications for about ($10 000). Also on that laptop are the personal
projects of the employee, that projects cost money, the owner of the
laptop worked on them in his/her spare time.

So, You wipe out the laptop, and then? You do damage to the laptop's
owner of about $10 000 + all the lost data.

I would recommend you to contact your lawyer...