Man Jailed After Using LimeWire For ID Theft

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @04:31AM from the guess-his-making-available-defense-didn't-work-either dept.

angry tapir sends along this excerpt from PC World: "A Seattle man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for using the LimeWire file-sharing service to lift personal information from computers across the US. The man, Frederick Wood, typed words like 'tax return' and 'account' into the LimeWire search box. That allowed him to find and access computers on the LimeWire network with shared folders that contained tax returns and bank account information. ... He used the information to open accounts, create identification cards and make purchases. 'Many of the victims are parents who don't realize that LimeWire is on their home computer,' [said Kathryn Warma of the US Attorney's Office]."

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Re:how dumb by CannonballHead · 2009-08-12 04:52 · Score: 5, Informative

Many people from older generations that have not had the time to learn how to use the computer aside from e-mail and online news have no clue. And computers aren't as static as we geeks like to think they are, and they slow down or speed up occasionally, install updates, etc.
For someone who has really no clue how it works and isn't even used to using it, it's very easy to see how they could not notice.