Social Engineering Week 3 "Let me take a video"

My task for this week was to get a stranger to let me take a video of them.

I knew that if I wanted stranger to let take a video of them, I have to have a really good reason. I first thought that my video topic has to be about something that everyone wants to talk about, my first choice was the recently problems that the MBTA services suffered from, I thought that I can ask anyone on the street and claim that I need to interview them about the current problem of our society and today I am covering the MBTA issue, buts then I still thought it might not work or I will have to ask a lot of people to find one person who would like to help me, then I realized the perfect place where people are familiar with school project is our college, and I automatically thought of the guys in the Admission office who wear red shirts and help us out every time we need their help. So after class I went to the lobby, selected the only guy who was not busy helping someone, I walked up to him and I nicely asked him if he can do me a favor by letting me taking a short video of him expression his opinion about the MBTA service after the recent snow storms. He was a little shy and tried to get his coworker to be in the video with him, his coworker was busy seamed not interested. I assured him that I needed only one person in the video, no need to bother his coworker and that it will not take long and that he can say even one idea only if he wants. He kindly said yes he will do it. I end up taking a 43 seconds video where he presented himself where he works and expressed his opinion about the issues and even give an example on how that affected his life and finally few Ideas on how they can improve the service.

I think that my strategy worked perfectly, by selecting the right environment and target my request did not seemed strange at all. Also I tried to find the easiest way possible to do my task, and I was surprise that I was able to convince a stranger to take a video of him in a really short time and in the first try.

I did not like the fact that I had to lie to get my task done, I tried to think of a way to do it without having to come up with fake reason and compromise my goal, but I couldn't think of anything.

I end up having a lot more information then what I thought I will get. I know his name and where he works but more importantly how he sounds like, which can be a great way to practice to talk like him using the video and maybe call other coworker pretending to be him and try to gather even more information about the school or company that he works at.

I honestly felt bad about not telling him the truth and also because he was a really kind and helpful person, but at the same time I was pretty happy that I accomplished my task with little effort and without having to stand in the street in this cold weather.