Is there a policy in place at your company related to IT personnel and the content they come across? Generally speaking, it would be wrong for you to open the file without a legitimate reason to do so. Just because it is named after you doesn’t give you enough reason to snoop into the file.

@KentA. Nothing written pertains to the matter except to act ethically.

@Aserre What kind of laws would it break? Maybe if this were a private personal laptop having a customer service rep look at it, but this is company property being serviced by company staff - the user has no right to privacy in many countries.

Do you know this person personally? Can you think of any reason why that file would be named after you? Could it be just the list of things this person wanted you to resolve?

@PagMax Makes a good point. Was the file left in a conspicuous place? If your name was assigned to their ticket, for all we know they may have wanted you to open it so you could read a note they left for you. Granted if that were the case they should have been more clear about it, but you never know.

@DavidK The modification date on the file is from several months ago.

The fact that someone's document contains your name as part of its file name does not give you the right to open that file. If your name is common, it is likely to be a coincidence. Even if it's not common, you work together, so anything could be in there, like your phone number, or some other harmless notes about you. The only reason to look for and open such a file would be if you have reason to believe that the owner meant for you to find and open that file. For example if the owner said "I put a file called TO MR HUMAN" on my Desktop with some info that you will need.

I don't know if I could survive the curiosity.

As a matter of law it would very by jurisdiction. You could ask on law.se and state your country.

There is a very large chance of it being just you CV or a performance report of some sort. If the file is months old and nothing bad was brought up to you, just assume it is nothing interesting and move on.

It's probably plans for your surprise birthday party. Or maybe not.

@DonQuiKong The good news: It's plans for OPs surprise birthday. The bad news: The file has nothing in it.

@MrMe I love that you, with your username, made that comment.

@Human: Judging by the file's modification date, I'm pretty sure it's nothing interesting. That's just in case you decide not to open it. If you do, take precautions so that you do not get caught doing it.

Ethics of that specific file aside, I worry about you needing to manually copy all the files over. Were you connected to his account?

The laptop's owner has created the file just before turning the laptop in to test you :-)

Whether its 'ethical' is probably not the best wording for the question, given the moral greyness of business. Its probably more important to ask whether it would have professional or legal consequences.

It's possible the document simply contains the description of the technical problem that person is facing (or was facing some time in the past). Some people have trouble explaining what's on their mind and need to draft their conversations. Another possibility is an old chat log with you.