Exclusive: Apartment Security Codes Shared Among Delivery Workers in Gangnam

[Anchor]

You may have had the experience of ordering food and having it delivered right to your door, even without providing the building's common entrance passcode. While convenient, it can also be unsettling. Our investigation has revealed that common entrance passcodes for apartment complexes and officetels in the Gangnam area of Seoul were being shared in a group chat room with over 200 delivery workers. The Personal Information Protection Commission has received a report and has begun verifying the facts.

Reporter Kim Gyu-ri has this exclusive report.

[Reporter]

This is a notice posted on June 13 in a KakaoTalk chat room where over 200 Coupang Eats delivery workers gather.

Following the names of apartment complexes, the building numbers, unit numbers, and four-digit codes were listed. These were the common entrance passcodes for over 50 apartment complexes and officetels in the Gangnam and Seocho districts of Seoul.

Let's try entering one of the passcodes shared in the chat room.

The door opened.

In this way, even outsiders can easily gain access to the residential entrance.

The person who posted the notice was a "team leader" who manages the delivery workers. A delivery worker, identified as A, expressed concerns about personal information and security issues and requested its removal.

[Delivery Worker A: Just the ones I checked, there are conservatively over 50 security codes for officetel commercial areas.]

However, it was not the list of passcodes that was deleted from the chat room, but worker A.

[Delivery Worker A: An hour after I said that, I was forcibly removed from the work chat room.]

The team leader who posted the notice explained in a phone call with SBS, "I posted it for the sake of work efficiency for delivery workers, for whom time is directly linked to income, but I deleted it immediately after the issue was raised."

He also explained that he had simply shared information he received from other chat rooms where delivery workers from various platforms gather.

While there have been cases where some delivery workers have written down common entrance passcodes on the edges of keypads, this is the first time it has been revealed that such an organized list was shared via social media.

[Lee Seong-yong / Yeonsu-gu, Incheon: I think the very fact that passcodes are being shared is unsettling. You never know how it might be misused.]

[Seong So-hyun / Songpa-gu, Seoul: I think people living alone, especially women, might feel scared thinking that someone could freely come and go right up to their front door.]

The Personal Information Protection Commission has received the report from worker A and has begun verifying the facts.

[Hwang Seok-jin / Professor at Dongguk University's Graduate School of Information Security: Documenting and sharing this goes beyond a simple matter of convenience and is highly likely to be a violation of the Personal Information Protection Act.]

Coupang Eats stated, "This is not a list compiled by Coupang Eats, and delivery-related information is provided only on a limited basis for up to 20 minutes after the delivery is completed."

(Video reporting: Kim Young-hwan | Video editing: Ahn Yeo-jin | Design: Jo Su-in, Kim Ye-ji)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.