Concealing on Slack isn't all that tough, obviously; you simply need to pretend you're a bot. That's what IT Brew‘s Tom McKay did when he left Gizmodo in 2022, and he went undiscovered by the website's management for months.
In a post on X, McKay shared some screenshots of the brand-new “Slackbot” personality he handled after he formally left GizmodoHe likewise validated to The Verge that this ridiculous trick actually took place.
If you're not glued to Slack for the majority of the day like I am, then you may not understand that Slackbot is the friendly robotic that resides in the messaging service. It assists you do things like set tips, learn your workplace's Wi-Fi password, or let you understand when you've been discussed in a channel that you're not a part of.
When it was his time to leave, McKay switched out his existing profile photo for one that looked like an angrier variation of Slackbot's real icon. He likewise altered his name to “Slackbot.” You can't simply alter your name on Slack to “Slackbot,” by the method, as the service will inform you that name's currently been taken. It does work if you utilize an unique character that looks like among the letters inside Slackbot, however, such as changing “o” with the Unicode character “о.”
The relocation camouflaged McKay's active Slack represent months, letting his account avert removal. It likewise permitted him to send out bot-like messages to his coworkers such as, “Slackbot truth of the day: Hi, I'm Slackbot! That's a reality. Have a Slack-ly day!” My coworker Victoria Song, who formerly operated at Gizmodoisn't all that amazed that this scenario unfolded, and states, “As Tom's previous colleague and a G/O Media survivor, this tracks.”
Obviously, not every business will succumb to this technique, as some have security procedures in location to avoid this example. Possibly Gizmodo‘s management believed that McKay's account had actually currently been erased. Or possibly they simply weren't eagle-eyed adequate to find a replicate Slackbot with a suspicious set of eyebrows.
