At the outside break area, an employee, Ann, asked another employee to let her into the building because her badge is missing. Which of the following does this describe?

Shoulder surfing involves covertly observing someone's screen, keyboard, or PIN pad to steal information, not gaining physical access through a secured door.

In this scenario, Ann attempts to enter a secured building by asking another employee to open the door for her, thereby bypassing the badge authentication system. This is the classic definition of tailgating - exploiting social compliance and politeness to piggyback through a physical access control. The missing badge is the pretext used to justify the unauthorized entry, making it a deliberate circumvention of physical security.

Whaling is a phishing attack targeting senior executives for company data and has no connection to physical building access by a regular employee.

Impersonation involves falsely claiming to be a different, specific person such as an IT technician or delivery worker, not simply asking a coworker to hold open a door.