Today’s XKCD is a little bit of nostaliga for an undocumented feature in a Windows product. But for Colin Birge, it reminded him of the woman who talked to Clippy.

What a lot of people didn’t realize was that Clippy, by default, sent anything you asked it to Microsoft, anonymized. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

No evil intent. We had no idea who asked what. It was a way of knowing what we’d screwed up. Lots of queries on a topic? Bad feature design. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

Somebody, probably a woman in the US Midwest, was typing a sentence at a time. Clippy would answer nonsensically. She’d type another one. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

Somebody, probably a woman in the US Midwest, was typing a sentence at a time. Clippy would answer nonsensically. She’d type another one. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

She’d lost her job. Her boyfriend was beating her. She was so lonely, and so afraid. All her waking nightmares, told to a paperclip. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

We couldn’t help. We didn’t know who she was. We’d gone to great lengths to make sure that we COULD not know who she was. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

So we read her story. One sentence after another. Soul-searing honesty, told to a little paperclip that could never, ever answer her. — Colin Birge (@WoS) December 18, 2013

It looks like you’re crying out for help, would you like some assistance? (Storify)