Final Social Engineer Task

For my last task, I chose to go dumpster diving in my neighborhood. Dumpster diving is the act of digging through people's trash to find information that can be useful in an attack.

A couple of my neighbors always put their rolling trash containers out a day before the trash truck collects them because sometimes the trash collectors pick it up early in the morning. Before I got to my house I quickly pulled a bag out of my next door neighbor’s trash bin and took it home. I was unlucky because there was nothing but garbage. It was so gross but I didn’t give up just yet. Later that night I went to a different area in the neighborhood and grabbed 3 different home’s trash bags. I was trying to look for mail, but most of them were torn apart. Luckily, I found a Chinese take-out bag. There was a receipt stapled to it with the person’s name, address, and phone number. Mission accomplished. I was able to retrieve valuable information on one of my neighbors through their trash. Most of them torn up their mail, but I guess because it was just a food receipt they didn't think twice about it.

My strategy was to do it as fast as possible and to act casual. There was no one in sight both times so I was pretty lucky. I’m glad I went back and grabbed more than one bag.

The moral stake is to be cautious of handling valuable information even when discarding, because your trash can be someone else’s treasure.

There are many things I can do with this information. With just this person’s first and last name, I can do a Google search on her. I would be able to retrieve online accounts and maybe even find images of them.

When I went through people’s trash, I was disgusted but I wanted to do something interesting and different. I was afraid someone would rush out their home and freak out but I’m glad no one did.