I witnessed the dumbest thing in the world in SMU today

Anyone with even a half functioning mind would know that full names, nric numbers and email addresses are private and confidential data. You won’t place it where anyone can access it.There is just so much potential for abuse.

Now guess what greeted me in SMU SOA printing room today.

13 pieces of paper with full name, nric number and email addresses of SMU students. I even know their gender! So if I am a stalker… MUHAHAHAHAHAHHA

A social engineer can do so much with this information. The potential for abuse is simply endless.

Now lets do a little security review.

Those pieces of paper were found lying on a printer in the printing room on level 2 of SOA. I was in the printing room for more than half an hour to print my BookINBookOUT flyers, and while I was there, nobody came to claim those papers. It seems that they were unintentionally left behind. The printing room does not require access card to enter. Anyone can enter it. What made it worst, is that there was an event going on in SOA level 2 at the same time. There were tonnes of outsiders walking around. Imagine one of them were to walk in to the printing room to take a look. Woot.

Those pieces of paper were apparently left there from people behind the ASOC camp, as the names were grouped by orientation camp groupings. I must say the group names such as “ironman”, “pink panther”, “Jimmy Neutron” and even “Po” from the most retarded kids’ show ever were very lame. I can also imagine that during the camp, people will be cheering “po!po!po!po!po!po!po!” WTF?

Anyway, the issue here is this. How can such a thing happen? All these are confidential personal data with potential for abuse. Why leave it there? This is a huge mistake by whoever from ASOC that left it behind. Major major mistake.

I’ve since took the papers and destroyed them. I hope none of the ex-cos of other camps would make such a mistake.

PS: Just a happy thought, imagine this person making this mistake when interning in a bank.