[Web4lib] Big Flash Drives (snooping)

Leo Robert Klein leo at leoklein.com
Fri Jun 9 22:50:53 EDT 2006


You know, I wish someone had looked into the 1 Gig Flash Drive I left in 
some computer and contacted me about it.

I looked around a week for it and then wound up having to get a new one 
-- two gigs this time.  Now, I've got a mini-address label stuck on the 
side of the new one.

In any case, at the most, I'd give the owner a day or two and then dive 
into the thing in order to find out who owned it.  I can't imagine an 
owner complaining about doing this -- when the reward is getting back 
his or her equipment.

LEO

-- -------------
Leo Robert Klein
www.leoklein.com

Richard Wiggins wrote:
> Forgive me if I've already told this story.
> 
> A colleague and I are tasked with raising awareness about managing
> sensitive data at a large midwestern university.
> 
> Unrelated to that effort, after he taught a class, he found an
> abandoned USB thumb drive.
> 
> We discussed the Right Thing To Do.
> 
> We concluded that he should leave a note where the drive was lost, to
> the effect that whoever lost the drive should go to the main office
> and describe the drive in order to retrieve it.
> 
> This new tale leads me to conclude that we did the right thing.
> 
> Those who draw an analogy to opening a wallet and looking for a
> driver's license: this is so very different, in so many ways:
> 
> -- You can discern a driver's license from a credit card quickly,
> recognizing the former without inhaling the latter.
> 
> -- A wallet can't infect your network.
> 
> An apparently lost USB thumb drive should go to the same Lost and
> Found as lost mittens.  Good Samaritans should not plug the drive into
> a computer.
> 



More information about the Web4lib mailing list