[Web4lib] Big Flash Drives (snooping)

[Richard Wiggins]

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.

/rich

On 6/9/06, Marion Sumerianlibrarian <marionsumerianlibrarian at yahoo.com> wrote:
> when people loose something of value they usually
> retrace their steps backward until they find it.
>
> hence, rather than read through a lost private journal
> in order to find its owner, as a trained archivist i
> know it'd be simpler and more respectful to give the
> author/owner a reasonable amount of time to come and
> get and it on their own.
>
> this holds true for any medium of information storage,
> including flash drives.
>
> respectfully submitted, ms
>
> --- "Kevil, L H." <KevilL at missouri.edu> wrote:
>
> > I really don't see a moral problem here. If I find
> > your wallet on the
> > sidewalk, you bet I will open it up so I can get it
> > back to you. Same
> > with flash-memory drives, notebooks, or (in the old
> > days) floppies.
> >
> > Hunter
> >
> > L. Hunter Kevil
> > Collection Development Librarian
> > University of Missouri-Columbia
> > Columbia, MO 65201
> > 573-884-8760
> > kevill at missouri.edu
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
> > [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf
> > Of Richard Wiggins
> > Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:10 PM
> > To: Dan Lester
> > Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
> > Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Big Flash Drives
> >
> > We had an interesting moral question:  what do you
> > do when you find an
> > abandoned thumb drive in a computer lab or public
> > space?
> >
> > If you plug it in and inspect it, you might find
> > things that you should
> > not see, or more importantly, the patron, doesn't
> > want you to see.
> >
> > The answer I proposed was to NOT plug it in, and
> > leave a note where it
> > was lost telling the patron that they should go to
> > the designated Lost
> > and Found area, and describe it in order to claim
> > it.
> >
> > How people in charge of public spaces handle lost
> > media will only
> > increase in importance.
> >
> > /rich
> >
> > On 6/8/06, Dan Lester <dan at riverofdata.com> wrote:
> > > Well, if you want to look at big flash drives,
> > check out
> > > www.kanguru.com, that now has a 64GB flash drive.
> > Of course it costs
> > > 2800 bucks, but....
> > >
> > > They are one of the many companies that has flash
> > drives with
> > > fingerprint secured encryption. So, guess we
> > needn't worry about how
> > > big the flash drives are.
> > >
> > > I know students who've lost 128MB flash drives,
> > but they're cheap.
> > > Imagine losing one of the 64gb drives....
> > >
> > > dan
> > >
> > > --
> > > Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan at RiverOfData.com
> > 208-283-7711
> > > 3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115  USA
> > > www.riverofdata.com   The Road Goes On Forever....
> > >
> > >
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