Man Jailed After Using LimeWire For ID Theft

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]."

Comments

Remove the buzzwords

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Man jailed for ID theft. This is a good outcome, I'd say.

The Limewire connection is only interesting because it shows social vulnerabilities inherent in the filesharing mechanism. As long as you make it simple to share files and folders, people are going to be lazy and end up sharing files that they never meant to share.

Re:Remove the buzzwords

[pha7boy]

A small change in Limewire should take care of problems like that (for example asking you to select/confirm which folders you share every time you open it up). I don't find the idea that parents who don't know what their kids installed on their computer is an acceptable excuse. If you have a kid, you better know what's installed on that computer... It's called parental responsibility.

Another entrepreneur...

[Wireless Joe]

...shut down by The Man.

Crime was not accessing the data

[davidwr]

The crime was using it.

Here's a moral equivalent:

Imagine of lots of people left the same forms on their car dashboard for all to see and parked their cars on the public streets. Then I walk along and write that info down in my notebook. So far, I haven't done anything illegal. Or I should say, if I have broken a law, then the laws are broken.

But once I use this information, particularly if I use it fraudulently, then I've committed a crime.

Re:Crime was not accessing the data

[Aladrin]

But he -did- have permission. They have given permission by having limewire share their computer's contents.

If I put a sign in my front yard next to my lawn chairs that says 'Free chairs', even if I can't read the sign myself, I can't blame anyone for taking the chairs. I did give them permission, even if I didn't know I was doing it.

And as far as 'protected computer' ... Leaving filesharing open to the world is the opposite of 'protected'. Having a bulldog in your front yard and leaving your front door open does not mean your house is protected.

Re:how dumb

[CannonballHead]

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.

Protected!?

[SendBot]

Wood was sentenced Tuesday to 39 months in prison and three years of supervised release for wire fraud, accessing a protected computer without authorization to commit fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

What chain of idiocy determined the computers he accessed to be "protected"?

Wood: Hey, do you have any files with names like this?
Computer: Yeah, I do.
Wood: Can I have them plz?
Computer: No problem - here they are for you.

Re:Outrageous!

[mcgrew]

Wait, wait, wait... are we /.ers for or against doing illegal stuff on P2P networks this week?

Some perfectly moral actions are illegal (e.g. smoking marijuana). Some abhorently immoral actions are perfectly legal (e.g. adultery). Sharing copyright files is illegal, but its morality is debatable. Defrauding someone of their hard earned cash is illegal, and its immorality is not debatable.

But I'm sure someone here will try to debate it anyway. :/

Re:how dumb

[InlawBiker]

For a bunch of techies on Slashdot it's hard to understand. It's like a car mechanic saying, "How could you not know your valves needed adjusting by how the engine was running? Now your motor is destroyed" and the customer's answer is "What's a valve?" I bet the auto mechanic web forums are full of people laughing at the "dumb" end users of expensive, ruined machines.

There are a whole combination of technical details to know with file sharing - Windows shares, file system permissions, why you shouldn't run applications as admin by default, IP, port address translation (if you have a typical NATing home router). Even if you think you understand the software, how can you be sure you're 100% safe when you install software that's DESIGNED to open up your computer to the world?

Re:how dumb

[mrsquid0]

No, they do not. Many people think that they are searching some sort of repository of files that was set up specifically to be searched. They do not realize that they are searching other people's hard drives, and other people are searching theirs. Even when they realize that people are downloading from them many people think that the downloading is restricted to music files. The idea that their entire hard drive may be open for searching is alien to some people.