nerd.of.steel

Of course, neither of them took me seriously and brushed off my sense of urgency as a paranoid delusion. Instead of taking action and fixing the problem, which would have been as easy as clicking a mouse a few times, they told me to just leave it as it was. Upset and frustrated, I emailed one of the head IT professionals in their corporate offices and informed him of the security risk. Once again, I received no response so I decided to just climb the ladder and informed my Regional manager, Mike Greene, about the problem. Luckily for every Cingular customer for whom we ever activated a phone for, this individual actually understood the importance of tackling this problem as soon as possible. Unfortunately, shortly after contacting him about the issue, the company decided that it was time he and they part ways, once again leaving me back at stage one where I started.

A couple weeks went by and we received a new Regional Manager by the name of Edmund Chun. A couple days after Edmund was promoted into his current position he took a trip to our store to introduce himself to all of the employees from our market. During this visit I once again touched base on this security flaw and expressed, in great detail, the dire urgency of getting this flaw taken care of. Once again though, no one appeared to be listening. While every person I talked to promised to help take care of the problem, no one was in a great deal of a hurry to actually fix it.

Eventually, Edmund decided to visit us again and on this one particular visit he was accompanied by the owner of the company, Shaun Yeh. During this visit I managed to sneak Shaun away for a second to explain this seriously dangerous flaw in our POS system to him. If anyone would have understood my sense of urgency to get this problem taken care of you would have guessed it was the actual owner of the company, right? Unfortunately my pleas for action once again fell on deaf ears! It was as if the louder I screamed the more everyone pretended to not hear me.

Frustrated beyond belief I made one more attempt to get the problem resolved. I begged and I pleaded, but in the end our loveable Edmund finally sat down with me and explained why this problem was not fixed, “No one knows about this problem and it will be too expensive to fix at the moment. The chances of someone stumbling upon this problem are slim. As long as you stop talking about it I’m sure no one will discover it!”

The tone in his voice let me know exactly where he stood. I could sit back, and keep my mouth shut, or I could find a new job. According to Edmund, as long as I didn’t tell anyone details about the flaw, it would never be discovered. What was the actual flaw in question? An unsecured wireless access point from our DSL provider, and a shared folder that contained our “password protected” Microsoft Access Database, which houses the personal information of every employee and customer who has ever stepped foot through our store’s doors. By personal information I mean names, addresses, phone numbers, IMEI numbers, SIM card numbers, social security numbers, driver license numbers, checking account numbers, routing account numbers, credit card numbers and a lot more. Trust me, something of that nature was most likely compromised a thousand times over. Luckily the databases in question only held the information for that store and that store alone, but when you have over 50 stores throughout the country those numbers add up really fast. For those of my readers who purchased phones from me in the Portland area, fear not. The second I discovered the flaw I addressed it by turning off our WiFi access point. Since we never used them there was never a reason to have them on. Unfortunately after calling around to several other stores, in many different states, it appears that the issue is still not taken care of.

Eventually, I decided that it was time for me to pursue other business ventures and Wireless Depot and I parted ways shortly there after. After leaving I was left with a decision I had to make. Do I “out” this company publicly and risk the consequences of angering the beast, or do I pretend this never happened and live with the fact that thousands of individuals are at risk of having their lives ruined because I was too afraid to take a stand. Everyone who is reading this article obviously sees which decision I thought was the right one. Sometimes the hardest thing for anyone to do is to speak up against those that do wrong.

At what point do we start holding million dollar corporations responsible for their carelessness? At what point do we take a stand to fight for what we believe in? Today is that day for me. Below is a complete list of all the stores under this company’s umbrella that are, and have been, at risk for lord knows how many years. If you purchased a phone from any of these locations I seriously suggest you go out and get your credit report and if possible set up some kind of credit protection on your social security number.

EDITORS NOTE: Wireless Depot operates under several other names in the many different states where it does business. Some of those names are JustPCS, Wireless Depot, B-Per Electronics, Digital PCS and The Net Wireless. The parent company, The Net Wireless (http://www.thenetwireless.com) is based out City of Industry, CA.

This entry was posted on Jul 27, 06:27 PM by Rocco Augusto. You can skip to the end and leave a response using the comment form.