Client accidentally sends engineer confidential documents, yet refuses to believe engineer after they claim to delete them, leading to a security dispute: ‘I didn’t mind escalating it’

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Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
May 15, 2025 7:00 AM EDT

Every company has information it does not want to get out to anyone outside. There is confidential information that should only stay within the company walls, so it has to be in the hands of people who can handle that. Every company has those who are trustworthy and can handle the responsibility of keeping that information to themselves, and those who everyone knows can't keep a piece of information to themselves for longer than a couple of hours.

Sometimes, a confidential document reaches the hands of someone who belongs to the latter group, and that might lead to some panic in the company. In a matter of minutes, that document can be seen by people who have no business seeing it, and who knows what bureaucratic mess that might lead to. 

The way a company handles that mess depends on the workers' ability to calmly put out the fires. If they can't do that, it might lead to stories like the one below…

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    Cheezburger Image 10505169408
    via Natee Meepian's Images

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • The engineer in this story did not expect to be caught in the middle of a bureaucratic mess of their client's company. After being assigned to a project with this company, the engineer was sent some documents about them, but was immediately informed that those documents are confidential and should be deleted.

    Even though the engineer deleted the documents without a word, the client was having trouble believing them, and it led to quite a confrontation. Keep scrolling to read the full story!

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    Blow a minor incident out of proportions? Dont mind if I do!

    I work as an engineer for a company that assigns me to various client projects. For one such assignment, I was added to a project that wouldn't start for a few weeks, so in the meantime I
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    stayed focused on other ongoing work. A few days before the project was due to begin, the external project lead sent me a ZIP file containing technical documentation: diagrams,
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    requirements, and other materials relevant to the upcoming project. I skimmed through it briefly, then moved on with my day. Nothing unusual. A couple of days later, I got an email from the external
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    company's scheduling manager saying that "a document" had. been sent to me which apparently contained some confidential company information, and asking me to delete the email. That's it.
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    No file name, no explanation, just a vague "please delete it." I shrugged, deleted the ZIP file, and replied asking if they could resend it without the problematic part. Then I forgot all about it.
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    That is, until I got a call from the most condescending, passive- aggressive person I've ever dealt witt, the scheduling manager from the client's side. She went on a 30-minute tirade about how the
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    previous project lead never should've sent me that document, how serious the situation was, and, most memorably, how she couldn't trust that I had actually deleted it. I quote:
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    "I can't just take your word for it. I'm not just going to trust you because you say so." Right. So at that point, I figured: Im done with you, If you're going
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    to act like I've just been handed nuclear launch codes, then I'll treat it like I've just been handed nuclear launch codes. I said, "You're absolutely right. I'll contact our Security Operations
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    team and report a formal security incident. They can coordinate with your SecOps team, and together we can do a full scrub of all relevant mail servers to ensure the document is completely gone. It's really the only way to be certain."
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    Suddenly, her entire tone changed. "Oh no no no, that won't be necessary. It's fine, I believe you!" She practically stumbled over herself trying to shut it down.
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    Because escalating this to both companies' SecOps teams would've turned it into a bureaucratic nightmare: incident reports, compliance reviews, and probably someone getting thrown under the bus.
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    delete
    via monkeypics

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    I politely reiterated that I really didn't mind escalating it if it would give her peace of mind. She very quickly decided she had enough peace already. We ended the call, and life moved on.
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    if you act like I've compromised national security, don't be shocked when I offer to treat it like a national security incident.
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    avid-learner-bot If a scheduling manager thinks deleting a ZIP file is a national security crisis, maybe the real problem is the person who sent a document without a
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    password-protected ZIP file in the first place... what's the protocol for handling documents that aren't even classified but somehow trigger a full-blown security panic?
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    cperiod She backed down way too easy, which I would take as a sign that it should have been immediately extra-priority escalated to Security as a MITM social engineering hack. against both companies.
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    IIITempered Old Woman This is my favorite kind of MC and the kind I practice myself. Oh, you want to report this/call the police/get the camera footage out? Let's GOOOOOO LOL
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    Zoreb1 I would have replied, "you just spent 30 minutes insulting me so what changed?"
    via barthem

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documents boss workplace-stories employee manager job malicious compliance tales-from-the-workplace client reddit story workplace Reddit company engineer
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