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IT Repair Installs Webcam Spying Software
Vapon writes "A lady noticed her computer was running slower after she had brought her computer in to be repaired. She took the computer to a second repair shop where they found that one of the problems was that her webcam would turn on whenever it detected her around and was taking photos and uploading it to a website. The repair technician that installed the software has done this to at least 10 women and has photos of at least one undressing."
Why on earth would he go to all this trouble when there's any number of friendly Filipino women out there willing to do the same at a low-low cost?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
so are "optimizations"
Never take your machine to one of those places, no exceptions.
That all depends on where you bought it in the first place. If you built it yourself, you have nothing to worry about.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Most of the time in cases like this it makes them feel much better knowing that they have some kind of power over the victim. He could have of course found regular porn, but maybe in his mind regular porn is too boring?
It's illegal to secretly record people, especially in their own homes (reasonable expectation of privacy). If you install a little camera in your neighbor's ceiling, you can bet you'll end up in jail. This is the same.
On top of that, there is the computer hacking, not performing the correct service (after all, by "fixing" the computer he made it slower)
And while there is no "right to privacy" explicitly state in American law, the Supreme court essentially created it in rulings during the later half of the 20th century (I want to say this was Roe v. Wade, but it may have been before).
Even if there is no criminal case (which, as I stated above, I'd be quite sure there is) she could always go civil. After all bugging someone else's computer and posting pictures of them undressing on the internet without their knowledge is definitely something you could get a civil judgment for. If that isn't intentional infliction of emotional distress, I'd be pretty surprised.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Hmm it seems I landed in a pub. Have you ever driven beyond the speed limit? I suggest you be shot as well.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Cars, like computers, require a certain level of knowledge, and the required tools.
PC's have come to the point where they don't even require tools. I always bring my phillips screwdriver with me to fix a computer, and have realized that I rarely use it any more. The tools required are more likely anti-virus and anti-spyware cleanups, followed in popularity by hard drive replacements (and data recovery tools), and CPU fan cleaning.
For a car, there are more tools required, but the parts on different cars do the same thing. They may not be interchangable, but they look similar, and act identically.
Despite the "complexity" of the computer system, that's usually the rarer of parts to fail. If you can just follow a simple flow chart, you can repair a car. Does it start? No. Does it get air? Fuel? Spark? No. Repair the source for this component.
People have mystified the working of an automobile so much that it seems like black magic, but as we work on computers, others see our work as black magic too. Oh my gosh, you type on the keyboard, and stuff happens? Wow. It's not that dissimilar to turning a wrench and making a car work again. You just have to understand the underlying technology, and the rest falls into place.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
A little offtopic but I don't understand why people say there is no explicit "right to privacy" in American law. I wonder if this was a talking point invented for some political reason at one point that filtered out into the mass consciousness somehow.
Anyway, Amendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The word "privacy" is not used but this is a right to privacy in a large sense, isn't it? That the government can't search you, can't search your house, can't go through your papers, without a warrant?
This particular case is more of a civil action since the government didn't do it, but I find it a little unreasonable to say there is "no" right to privacy or that the Supreme Court "created" all our privacy rights, when there is clearly at least some privacy explicitly written in the Constitution.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Not really that. And it's not totally a power trip thing, either. It's different seeing someone naked when you've had some personal interaction with them. While I've never done anything like this, I know there's quite a few slashdotters out there who watch porn, half-hoping they find some girl they knew in high school, or find out the woman down the street has her own website. This is the same kind of thing.
For those that don't believe in God, the same rights can be dervived through logic.
Given that a majority of men have watched or are watching porn, and the numbers are steadily rising for women too, I'm not so sure. Chances are half the guys at the office, the taxi driver if you use one at any point, at least one of the clerks at the supermaket you visit, maybe even one of the doctors who've treated you, etc, are into porn. If porn taught that, you'd notice it.
Plus, I don't know... I thought porn was about _sex_. I don't get the mentality that it's all some kind of (preferrably male) plot and power game. There _are_ people of both sexes who enjoy sex, as just that. Not as some form of power game or currency, but as just, you know, two people having an intimate moment and some fun too.
So, really, I don't get it when I hear it that porn is somehow teaching males to exert power over women. (Read your quote too, if you don't know what I'm talking about.) Or that anything that happens in there is only for the male's pleasure. Apparently regardless of whether it's one on one, two guys on one gal, two gals on one guy, or just two lesbians and no guy involved, it surely is only a depiction of something where just the guy gets any pleasure there. Apparently even if what's portrayed is one guy going down on his SO, it's still only for the guy's pleasure. And apparently demeaning, abusive or otherwise unwanted and unwelcome for the woman, if it involves sex in any way.
Women are occasionally known to have orgasms too, you know?
Plus, it's a depiction of an act which isn't just natural, but millions of married people are doing it right as you read this. And that's not even counting the unmarried ones. Is it really that much worse and harmful than a depiction of someone being beaten up, shot, stabbed, burned alive, or the other stapples of TV and movies? I mean, if people take what they saw in movies into the real world, wouldn't it make more sense to worry about those who watch war movies?
But, anyway, anyone who thinks that any kind of sex is inherently demeaning or submissive for the woman, well, at least do us guys a favour and don't marry :P
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
We can't keep wasting tax dollars on court cases for stupidity, which is exactly where this case will go.
You should move to North Korea or China if that's the sort of country you want to live in. I prefer to live where you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and where the punishment fits the crime.
I'm sick of you assholes trying to turn my country into MORE of a police state. Shoot yourself for treason and save the government the trouble.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
> I smell a lawsuit.
You want to know who I'd like to sue? The idiot who designed the webcam. They all have a light that is supposed to let you know when it is on. But of course it is just software in the windows driver and can be disabled by any idiot with a hex editor. THAT is the crime here.
You should be able to trust that light. That mofo should be hard wired to go on whenever the CCD is charged or when data is actually being sent. And it should have a delay (a simple capacitor would do) to make sure it stays lit for at least 1.0 seconds anytime it is triggered to stop single frame caps being hard to spot.
The light's specific purpose is to notify the user and it is obviously DEFECTIVE. A mandatory recall or two would drive the point home to the hardware makers about putting vital safety functions into the driver.
Democrat delenda est
Keys fell from your keyboard but you are still seriously recommending that people buy from Apple ? Are you joking ?
Let's see... as a former IT guy, I've worked on thousands of computers over the last 20 years. A few dozen have had a key or two break/snap off (typically a well-worn one like a space bar, command key, letter "s", etc.). Probably five or six of those were Apple systems; the rest were mostly a mix of Dell, Sony, and Toshiba. Seems perfectly reasonable that it would happen now and then, even to the best of hardware.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Who the hell modded this insightful?
Amendment I: The government CAN NOT restrict religion or speech
Amendment II: The government CAN NOT restrict citizens from keeping arms
Amendment III: The government CAN NOT quarter soldiers in your house
Amendment IV: The government CAN NOT search and seize your affects without a warrent
etc.
No, I think you got modded flamebait because you missed the joke and started name calling. Ever heard of a meme?