11/14 - Watch your OPSEC

Funny thing happened in r/UTSC. It turns out that one of the professors in the English department may have been forging RateMyProfessor (RMP) reviews. This is pretty funny, not really serious because RMP is extremely biased, more than anything. I don't know if it is because this individual needs an ego boost or something, but several students put forth EXTREMELY compelling evidence (to the point I would wish they put the same amount of effort into their assignments for the class :P )

But alas, it turns out that not just students frequent r/UTSC. Professors, who are also Homo Sapiens, have a functionning brain, have the cash for an internet connection, and have a funcitonning device capable of accessing the internet, are able to access the hellhole known as Reddit. So, long story short, the professor in question found the post (LOL!)

Continuing this comedy, the professor promptly pulled up the Reddit post in lecture, and went off, reading the accusations, reading some of the RMP reviews, and even connecting what was happening to the material they were studying (credit where credit is due, seems to be taking it well in person atleast). It is also suspected the professor made a Reddit account to defend himself, but he made the critical mistake of poor OPSEC and used a username he has already used on a different platform, leading to the astute UTSC(?) redditors quickly discovering his identity and downvoting him.

Enter our dumbass

Believe it or not, the professor's mistakes in addressing the issue in lecture and on Reddit were not the biggest mistakes. I truly thought the professor was going to make the blunder on the board and get check-mated, but no, it was a student in his class. Someone, while the professor was going through the accusations in lecture, whipped out their iPhone 14 and began to discreetly record the professor. They then made a post to r/UTSC to try and capitalize off the drama and earn internet clout. Just one problem. THEY POSTED THIS ON GOOGLE DRIVE WITH THEIR PERSONAL GMAIL ACCOUNT. Not only completely doxxing themselves in the process, but exposing themselves for actually doing something they shouldn't have (recording a lecture without permission). This is the biggest blunder in the game so far. If it were me, and I wanted this internet clout, I would not choose G-Dox-oogle to share my illicitly(?) obtained clips (which by the way were nothign of value, being short clips that barely recorded any audio with nothing funny being said by anyone). I would have chosen a more anonymous filesharing platform. Furthermore, I would probably use some sort of Incognito-mode/Privacy-mode so the cookies do not stay on my device, and I would have had a VPN on so my IP doesn't get logged. Furthermore, I would have wiped the metadata from the recordings (LOL! The dumbass didn't do that either). So, in short, this dumbass picked themselves a bad hand (choosing to do this in the first place) and played it poorly. RIP dumbass. If they had known about good OPSEC practices, they 99% would have gotten off scot free. Though I guess you can only ask for so much from an English major.

The aftermath

OP deleted their post, deleted the Google Drive folder, and if anything else came of it, godspeed, dumbass. Good riddence.

Lesson - Practice good OPSEC

Josh