A third of IT pros haunted by "user error"
London, United Kingdom – 31st October 2025: To celebrate Halloween, new data from SolarWinds reveals the most common IT "crime scenes" that keep IT teams up at night.
In a survey of 437 global IT professionals, a third (33%) named "user error" as the most common offence, while one in five (20%) said the worst crime is when non-IT colleagues fail to log a ticket.
However, when tickets do arrive, they can be downright spooky. In the most Halloween-worthy reports, IT pros faced a blood-spattered keyboard dropped at the helpdesk and dead rodents discovered in the processor. One seasonal tale of a "haunted" computer turned out to be a mischievous tabby cat batting a forgotten wireless mouse.
Less eerie but equally exasperating were tickets for entirely non-IT issues, including a Tesla, a new calculator and a leaky sink! There were also throwbacks to older IT: an employee insisting "the coffee holder" (aka disc drive) in their computer didn't fit a new mug, and a printer that allegedly "fell" into a deep fat fryer. While separate research indicates 61% of IT professionals solve most issues within 5 to 15 minutes, such distractions and deviations can be time and resource-consuming when amplified across the business.*
Other frequent IT misdeeds include clicking on suspicious links (14%), ignoring updates (12%), weak or forgotten passwords (11%), and bringing in rogue devices (7%).
Commenting on the findings, Sascha Giese, Tech Evangelist at SolarWinds, said: "Halloween or not, most tech errors aren't supernatural, they're human. As amusing as these spooky IT stories are, user error can have serious consequences for today's businesses. When IT teams investigate an issue, they should always assume user error first rather than going full Ghostbusters.
"Clearly, the scariest thing for any IT team is a problem that never makes it into the system. If colleagues log issues promptly and follow the right processes, IT teams can work their magic and exorcise most gremlins before they turn into real security risks."
To learn more about the findings, visit: https://thwack.solarwinds.com/resources/b/community-announcements/posts/happy-it-pro-day-celebrating-the-heroes-who-keep-tech-and-us-running