Exclusive: Apartment Security Breached as Delivery Drivers Share Access Codes

[Anchor]

You may have experienced the convenience—and the unease—of having food delivered right to your doorstep, even when you didn't provide the building's common entrance passcode. Our investigation has revealed that a group chatroom with over 200 delivery drivers was sharing the entrance passcodes for apartment complexes and officetels across the Gangnam area of Seoul. The Personal Information Protection Commission has received a report and has begun verifying the facts.

Kim Gyu-ri reports exclusively.

[Reporter]

This is a notice posted on June 13 in a KakaoTalk chatroom where over 200 Coupang Eats delivery drivers are members.

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 Seoul's Gangnam and Seocho districts.

Let’s try entering one of the passcodes shared in the chatroom.

The door opened.

This allows even outsiders to easily access the residential hallways.

The person who posted the notice was a "team leader" who manages the drivers. A delivery driver, identified as A, expressed concerns about privacy and security and requested that the list be deleted.

[Delivery Driver A: Just from what I’ve checked, there are conservatively over 50 security codes for officetels and commercial buildings.]

However, it wasn't the list of passcodes that was deleted from the chatroom; it was Driver A.

[Delivery Driver A: An hour after I said that, I was forcibly removed from the work chatroom.]

In a phone call with SBS, the team leader who posted the notice explained, "I posted it for the sake of work efficiency for delivery drivers, whose income is directly tied to time, but I deleted it immediately after concerns were raised."

He further explained that he had simply shared information he received from other chatrooms where drivers from various delivery platforms gather.

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

[Lee Seong-yong/Yeonsu-gu, Incheon: I think the very act of sharing passcodes is unsettling. You never know how it might be misused.]

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

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

[Hwang Seok-jin/Professor at Dongguk University's Graduate School of International Information Security: Documenting and sharing this information 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."

(Reported by Kim Gyu-ri | Video by Kim Young-hwan | Video Editing by Ahn Yeo-jin | Graphics by Jo Soo-in and Kim Ye-ji)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.