\n<\/p>\n
Hiding on Slack isn\u2019t all that hard, apparently; you just have to pretend you\u2019re a bot. That\u2019s what IT Brew<\/em>\u2019s Tom McKay did when he left Gizmodo<\/em> in 2022, and he went undetected by the site\u2019s management for months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a post on X<\/a>, McKay shared some screenshots of the new \u201cSlackbot\u201d persona he took on after he officially left Gizmodo<\/em>. He also confirmed to The Verge<\/em> that this silly prank really happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you\u2019re not glued to Slack for most of the day like I am, then you might not know that Slackbot is the friendly robot that lives in the messaging service. It helps you do things like set reminders, find out your office\u2019s Wi-Fi password, or let you know when you\u2019ve been mentioned in a channel that you\u2019re not a part of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When it was his time to leave, McKay swapped out his existing profile picture for one that resembled an angrier version of Slackbot\u2019s actual icon<\/a>. He also changed his name to \u201cSlackbot.\u201d You can\u2019t just change your name on Slack to \u201cSlackbot,\u201d by the way, as the service will tell you that name\u2019s already been taken. It does<\/em> work if you use a special character that resembles one of the letters inside Slackbot, though, such as replacing<\/a> \u201co\u201d with the Unicode character \u201c\u043e.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The move camouflaged McKay\u2019s active Slack account for months, letting his account evade deletion. It also allowed him to send bot-like messages to his colleagues such as, \u201cSlackbot fact of the day: Hi, I\u2019m Slackbot! That\u2019s a fact. Have a Slack-ly day!\u201d My colleague Victoria Song, who previously worked at Gizmodo<\/em>, isn\u2019t all that surprised that this situation unfolded, and says, \u201cAs Tom\u2019s former coworker and a G\/O Media survivor<\/a>, this tracks.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of course, not every<\/em> company will fall for this trick, as some have security measures in place to prevent this kind of thing. But perhaps Gizmodo<\/em>\u2019s management thought that McKay\u2019s account had already been deleted. Or maybe they just weren\u2019t eagle-eyed enough to spot a duplicate Slackbot with a suspicious pair of brows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n