#. Mr. A, who owns a villa at a redevelopment site in Seongdong-gu, Seoul, went through an absurd situation. A real estate agent who rented the villa and lived in Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, came to A's house one day. The broker asked for the villa to be put up for sale. Mr. A was questioned how the real estate agent found out his actual residence address.

According to the maintenance industry, there is a constant problem of leaking membership lists at the maintenance business site. This is because the list has a great value to those who use members as customers. As in the case of A, in addition to the situation where the list is transferred to the hands of the broker, the construction company seeking to select the contractor often has the list. Upon obtaining the list, the broker can contact the members directly to secure the sale, and the construction company can promote the company ahead of the selection of the contractor.

◆ Will the image get worse? It's actually "Shhhhhhh"

Unauthorized leakage of membership lists acquired for business is subject to punishment. Subparagraph 2 of Article 59 of the Personal Information Protection Act prohibits the act of leaking personal information or providing it to others for use without authority. Violation of this could result in imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to 50 million won pursuant to Article 71 No. 9 of the same Act.

The membership list itself is not subject to disclosure prohibition. According to the Urban and Residential Environment Improvement Act, if a member or landowner requests to read or copy the list, the chairman of the promotion committee or the project implementer must comply within 15 days. However, if the list acquired for business is provided to an intermediary or construction company without consent or legal basis, it can be punished for violating the Personal Information Protection Act.

Nevertheless, it is rare for a list leak to be publicized. This is due to concerns that there is not much awareness of the problem of personal information leakage, and that the image and asset value of the workplace may fall if negative events are known to the outside world. "In the run-up to moving into reconstruction apartments, brokers often tried to preoccupy customers by secretly obtaining lists," a maintenance industry official said. "Construction companies also lent funds to early businesses that lacked project costs and demanded lists in return."

The leakage of the list can also undermine the transparency of the selection of contractors. This is because if the construction company that obtained the list approaches the members individually and provides gift certificates or cash, the selection of the contractor could turn into a money election. An external (OS) industry official said, "Before the selection of the contractor, I was contacted by a construction company asking how much the membership list would be sold for."

◆ "Requires secure management systems"

Some point out that the management of the membership list is sloppy. In the maintenance project, the list is mainly managed as an Excel file, but it is easy to transmit and replicate outside through e-mail, messenger, and cloud, and it is difficult to track the leak path.

Another risk factor is that employees of OS companies participate in creating and organizing lists. Usually, unions hire OS companies to encourage members to participate ahead of the general meeting. Information checked by OS agents while visiting members is collected by computer staff and organized into lists. In the process, there are voices that it is also a problem that a small number of computer companies belonging to computer staff are in charge of making lists at many of Seoul's workplaces. A real estate expert said, "The risk of leakage is increasing as we manage the list with Excel files," and suggested, "We need a security system that can encrypt, control access rights, and record the history of reading and downloading."

[Reporter Lee Yong An]