Man Reportedly Jailed for Using Lynx

wezzul writes "A Londoner made a tsunami-relief donation using Lynx on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site operator decided that this 'unusual' event in the system log indicated a hack attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him." Honestly, though, aside from a BBC article about a tsunami fund hacking probe that doesn't mention user agents there's little to corroborate this. Hopefully Lynx users need not worry too much yet.

Comments

Re:governments are funny.

[L.Bob.Rife]

But the real question is, did this request go through a judge to get a warrant, or was it simply some sysadmin making a claim (which could be easily refuted by an expert) and the police arresting somebody on one mans word.

Will police arrest somebody if I claim they killed somebody, or do they still need evidence?

Insightful???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just because he eats apples doesn't mean he is not a child molester"

Where is the connection of the two? Parent puts some claim in the room, based on a connection which doesn't exist, and is modded up?

Re:Insightful???

[LarsWestergren]

I actually thought it was pretty insightful, but I'll post instead of mod.

So far, all comments are supporting one of two hypotheses:
a) The story is a hoax, no one was arrested.
b) The story is true, OMG they are after us just for using Lynx!

Grandparent pointed out a possible third alternative:
The person was using Lynx, the bastard really tried to hack the tsunami relief site, and that's why he was arrested.

Re:I don't believe it

[dbIII]

I wouldn't put it past the police/judges in any country of being largely ignorant of what a browser agent really means

I see it as being "the expert says this guy is a hacker, so we arrest him" - while the reality is that the "expert" isn't an expert and is not under adult supervision.

I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing. Hopefully we'll get more info so the words "you got a customer arrested because you were too ignorant to do your job properly?" follow this guy around for his entire career - if justified.

I use lynx regularly, as do many others, any sysadmin who has never heard of it is inexperienced. If someone in a workplace is browsing pr0n for eight hours a day, the only safe way (grannies doing what?) to confirm that the URLs have dodgy content is lynx or similar things, or it's the simplest way to see if your web server is up or not from a console in the cold depths of a server room.