A Windows command prompt makes a surprise appearance on an Irish parcel locker

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The Register's long running BORK series has a fresh entry, and this one comes from a parcel locker in Ireland. Richard Speed reports that a reader went to collect a parcel from an OOHPod locker and found a blank screen with what looked like a minimised Windows command line window

Curiosity won, and the reader tapped to maximise it. Up popped a full command prompt on a public kiosk. The locker has no keyboard or input port, so there was not much anyone could do with it, but it was still an unexpected sight

Another tap closed the window, and the normal OOHPod interface came back. The parcel was collected without any further drama. The article jokes about what a command prompt on a public kiosk could allow, and asks readers whether they would have behaved responsibly

Public screens showing errors or desktops are a classic source of amusement, from airport departure boards to supermarket tills. They are usually harmless, but they also remind us that a lot of public technology runs ordinary operating systems underneath

A touchscreen with no keyboard limits the risk here, although some kiosks have been escaped in clever ways before. Locking kiosks into a single app properly is a basic security step. Hopefully OOHPod tightens things up

What is the strangest public screen error you have seen? And would you have been tempted to poke around?

Oh no, what happened to my OOHPod? Windows command prompt puts in a surprise appearancewww.theregister.com