The dangerous ones are these misguided IT departments.
Of course it's a balance, but think of the wasted productivity from a 2 minute timeout with stupid password requirements like that. That incurs a cost.
I bet they also have many other wonderful ideas and overly-bureaucratic processes that are strangling efficiency and preventing innovation.
Hah. I'd like to think there's nothing to fear from me as a user.
Look, I get why some of these policies are in place -- a bunch of it stems from locking down our systems and protecting critical data due to various Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. Plus, sometimes smart people do dumb things, and it leads to bad things (e.g, see the LinkedIn incident) [1].
But man, oh man, is it annoying! Especially if I'm in my own home, with no one around, and I otherwise get my work done.
I thoroughly agree - Two minutes is an insane timeout, and exactly the kind of security stupidity that makes users like yourself build ways to circumvent it, making it worse than useless because now you're plugging in sketchy dongles into your corporate PC.
If you were really smart you would lobby your IT department to change the ridiculously short timeout, and protest by not working when it locks on you during normal pauses.