Pass laptop on to a new employee without having to set it up again?

I started my new job and finally got my predecessor's laptop. I was told I could just use it. However, I was not told how to use it. When I looked into the administrator user account, I could even read my predecessor's emails. So I started to set up the laptop again, which got me into trouble with our IT supervisor, who now said "I would have given him hours of work now" and that something like that wouldn't work.

My question: is he right and should I have used the laptop just like that? Or is the company - as I understand it should run - obliged to completely clean up a shared laptop beforehand?

Ouch!

Basically, you have to use a tool as your employer puts it in your hand. It should only contain business and not private data.

You do not have to worry whether your employer has committed data protection violations.

Uff… I understand that it would have to be set up again. Personally, it is not ok that old data from other contractors with potentially private content is given into new hands. I'm not an expert there.

But of course you can't just screw around there yourself.

I would have reported in your place that you have access to old data and asked for a cleaned device.

Why set up again? And did you save the old content somewhere?

If you are the legal successor, you must even have access to your old mails.

So as long as there's nothing private on the computer and was there, you could still have used it as it is.

On the contrary, you may have destroyed important data because there's a 6-year retention period for business emails. Is it contractual content, invoices etc. Then even 10 years.

In addition, not every business partner knows something about the person leaving and may continue to write to them, these emails are now to be processed by you as the successor. So you should only have added your email address in the email program, but you should also continue to check your emails, at least for a reasonable period of time.

Such an intervention is discussed in advance with the EDP.

To name it clearly. It is a tool that your company has made available to you. No more and no less. You have to do your job. Finished. Whether the company deletes the device in order to hand it over to you virgin, that is entirely up to the company. However, if you found private things from your predecessor on it, you should have returned the part with a reference to data protection. So you did wrong twice. First, when you made unauthorized and unauthorized changes to the device and once when you violated data protection.