Posted on 02/09/2008 9:46:43 PM PST by ChocChipCookie
My sister-in-law and brother-in-law discovered that a neighbor has been tapping into their unsecured wireless internet connection. They've discovered 8-10 folders of photos accessible through their network that do not belong to them. (My BIL discovered this a few days ago when he wasn't able to get an internet connection and went searching for his wireless connection.) Some are general family photos of camping trips, their home, etc., but there are numerous photos that can only be described as all-male kiddie porn. Tonight my husband took steps to delete access to the folders that had been mapped to their computer and secure their network.
My SIL and BIL recognized the people in the non-porn photos as neighbors who live across the street, but they have not yet contacted the police. Because my elderly mother-in-law and an elderly aunt (both in their 70's) live with them and are home alone during the day, they are nervous about their safety should these scumbag neighbors discover who turned them in. I don't believe they know these neighbors by name or have even spoken to them.
Can any Freepers suggest the best course of action here? My in-laws had named their wireless network with their last name, so it's very possible that these neighbors know whose network they have been using. Now that access to the photos has been deleted, can the police still pursue this? Needless to say, my first instinct is to call the police myself, but it's not my family in the situation.
And yes, I am familiar with Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Amiraults and cases like theirs. A certain amount of fear of the witch hunts is justified, but this thread is over the top.
At this point I think I will take your advice and STFU.
I know someone exactly like you. He was a computer geek also — knew his way around the computer pretty well. His sweet little wife is raising their two children alone, because he is serving 5 years in prison (talked into pleading guilty for a lesser sentence), all because he downloaded a bunch of music to his work laptop, and took it into the office to upload onto the network. FBI came right to his office within a few days, and he was done.
Now — he has to register FOR THE REST OF HIS NATURAL LIFE as a sex offender on Megan’s website, and when he comes home on parole (for at least 3 years after he is out of prison) he will not be able to live anywhere near minor children — including his own. Child Protective Services has already come knocking on his wife’s door, since a neighbor found the husband’s name on Megan’s List site, and she is on their radar, if she lets him come near the home once he is paroled.
These are normal, nice middle class working people who are just minding their own business, and raising their little kids. Ask HER if she thought this could happen to them. Ask her husband how he is liking prison. She lives too far away from where he is serving time to see him more than once every few months. His family has abandoned him because they cannot bear to visit him in prison.
If it can happen to THEM, it can happen to anyone.
If your BIL viewed any of the pictures on his computer, they ARE on his computer in some TEMP files. They can be retrieved by a forensic computer specialist.
Unfortunately, everyone here is ignoring a more likely potential source of these pictures. I had a client (a professional office) who called me because their receptionist's computer's operation had slowed to a dull crawl. When I investigated I discovered the computer had been hijacked and converted to a spambot sending out kiddie porn spam. The owner and the receptionist were clueless... and innocent! Further investigation found that the hijacking occurred when the receptionist opened an email she thought came from a client (it was actually had the return email address of a legit client) and the system because infected by a worm that downloaded the kiddie porn and the converted the computer into a spambot sending out the spam using email addresses found in the address book... just as the patient's computer had been hijacked.
Perhaps, the neighbor is as innocent as your Brother-in-law... and merely the victim of a virus or trojan program.
There was a case where a fellow took his computer in to have it repaired because it was slow... and the repair shop found and reported kiddie porn that the system was sending out. The computer was being used as a server for a commercial kiddie porn web site. The owner was arrested and tried. It was TWO YEARS LATER before a forensic computer specialist proved that the porn had been placed on his computer by a spambot, converting his computer into a spambot server as well, an d that the owner was totally unaware of its existence on his computer. By that time, the guy's marriage, business, and life were in shambles. His wife divorced the "pervert," took the house and kids, had his business assets siezed, and he was forced to declare bankruptcy due to huge legal defense fees.
Unfortunately, most police departments are not well versed in how to handle this problem... and are likely to assume the owner is the criminal.
Stuff is stuff. Bandwidth is bandwidth. Bandwidth is not "stuff". There are established conventions about where outdoors ends and your residence begins. Not so with bandwidth!
If you put an unsecured WiFi net on the air, how is someone to know (to the precision of criminal law, at any rate) whether you are offering free beer or just forgot (as in the current case)?
Obviously, even if you are Panera or Whole Foods or that silly coffee outfit, you ought to be practicing proper network hygiene! You should make sure your customers' mag stripes go over a separate, secure network.
Public policy should not reward failure to secure networks. If you put it out there, it's free! And if someone utters a threat against the POTUS over your network, well, you do have your MAC address logs linked to your video surveillance, don't you? MAC addresses? Video? Time stamps? Sure, we've got all that. But, oh, well he might have been parked in the alley behind the dumpster .. our cameras don't cover that area ... and, of course, it's all academic, because the perp changed his MAC address before accessing the network, so our logs are worthless!
But I'm not advocating legislation. Free WiFi is valuable. It should remain unregulated and be kept as unlawyered as possible. Regulating it would make it more expensive. And, as I said, I'm cheap. Especially when it comes to lawyers and regulation. It's in my personal selfish interest, thank you very much!
You are very naive in this area. Someone is paying for that "bandwidth". Unless the person advertises that the bandwidth is freely available to all/any, it is "owned" by the person who contracted for it and is paying for it. 99.999% of all DSL/Cable contracts FORBID you from sharing your bandwidth with the neighbors. "Gee, I thought by them not securing their lawnmower and leaving it on the front lawn, they were giving it away to anyone who walked by..." won't fly in court and neither will "Gee, I thought I could just use my neighbors wireless without their permission and steal bandwidth they are paying pay" won't fly either. Theft of services.
But kiddie porn on a hard drive trumps stealing services any day of the week, in our sex offender hysterical criminal justice system. It is “arrest the pervert who has the CP on his computer” and ask questions like ...NEVER! The laws as they are written and implemented currently do NOT care one bit about the “truth” as to how the porn got onto your hard drive. You will lose every dime you have, and your fine reputation, and at LEAST two years of your life, as well as your dignity and your freedom, just to defend yourself. And you better have a pile of cash sitting in a bank somewhere, to ever think of having any chance at beating the charges.
It’s bad, really bad out there. According to the laws, EVERYONE is a sex offender, and no child is safe anywhere on the planet.
Well, congratulations! You sound like a guy who actually reads those EULAs! As for me, I just click thru! And, if I find an unsecured WiFi, hey, I'm online! Email. Google. Fat City! I know nothing of ISPs and DSL/Cable contracts! Twelve hops to Google. Good enough for me!
You want to secure your WiFi? It's simple. RTFM. Read the directions. Select WPA2 and set a shared secret. If you didn't, it must be because you are a bandwidth Santa Claus!
"Gee, I thought by them not securing their lawnmower and leaving it on the front lawn, they were giving it away to anyone who walked by..."
That would have to be judged on a case by case basis. Lawnmowers != bandwidth.
If the lawnmower is old and decrepit and alongside the garbage, it is free for the taking. If it's simply on the property owner's premises and physically accessible, then it's theft to take it. That's obvious. But with bandwidth, the presumption is, unsecured == free!
Maybe to you but 99.9% of the time you'll get nailed if it goes to court.
Ok. I have a problem with this. “Tapping into” a wireless network does not give one the ability to put pornography on someone elses computer on that network. You either have been accessing pornography or you have not been; it is your computer, the wireless is simply access to the internet.
Simply not true. If you have file and drive sharing turned on, you’re open for bizness.
FWIW, i'm a cop. don't have much experience with this kind of problem, but i can offer some advice.
call the FBI and local law enforcement. in that order. locals will be all too happy to let the feds handle it. i'd go in person to the nearest field office if possible. and for gods sake tell them to stop destroying evidence!
even if these people figure out who turned them in chances are there will be no retaliation. that kind of stuff just doesn't happen all that often. this ain't the movies. lawyer? probably a good idea. but if you just go in and explain the situation, you'll be fine. the feds handle this kind of stuff all the time. the worst thing you can do is let them come to you. you have to go to them first. if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. don't listen to people who have fourth hand stories about some guy who knows a guy who's brother went through this exact thing and now has to register as a sex offender. the system works. at least from what i have seen.
ok, flame away with your rhetoric about how i have no idea what i am talking about...
99.9% won't go any where near court.
But for the 0.001%, the opinion of the court should encourage proper network hygiene. WPA2. Simple. RTFM! In other words, you didn't read the manual. You're a jerk! You blundered into cyberspace without reading the manual! What kind of idiot are you?
In cases where someone abuses an unsecured network connection, said someone, if identifiable, should be held responsible. But, in the interst of cynwoody's need for cheap mobile bandwidth, the unwitting provider of said bandwidth should be held blameless!
The perp in this may be a minor child at the house in question. We found some pretty awful stuff on our PC that came from my 13 yo stepson’s surfing.
Ahh hmmm not true! for many many reasons.
We will skip trojans and viruses (Cause I don't think this is what happened in this case.)
If you have a NETWORK and Enable FIle sharing then people can most definitely put stuff on your computer in the Folders designated as Shared Files.
For instance if you have a home netowrk and designated a Folder of Photos as shared on Computer B and have enabled File Sharing then Anyone coneected to your network can look at that folder and if permissions are set properly can upload to that folder.
Good Lord!!! Get a grip!! All my husband did was secure my in-law’s network so their neighbor, presumably, can’t access it again. Tell me how that is POSSIBLY breaking ANY law!!! He didn’t erase ANYTHING! I thought I posted that quite a while back on this thread. Also, there was none of this garbage actually on my BIL’s computer.
I do think your advice for them to keep quiet about this is good. I also agree with you, based on some cases I’ve read about, that LE can over-react to this type of situation.
The set up page online for your wireless router should ask if you want to enable it to share files with other computers on your network.Of course you want to click no.Mine has a security light that’s lit up when the security is set up right.I had to type in the model # on the search bar and pulled up a chat room where I found out what the password was,then I was able to get to the website for that model number of my router to set everything up.[By typing the model #,it asked for a specific password,that’s when I looked for a chatroom and I found out what it was.]You can set it all up from there.I wasn’t able to do that from the CD that came with it.My ex neighbors wife,who plan on moving back,was bragginging on about how she could tap into anybodies network on the street,and said she could use mine now when I told here I had one setup.I told her not so fast,mine’s secure and the other people on the street didn’t have their’s secure and I’d have to let her on my network.When you setup everything online,they have you put a flashdrive in and it puts the files on that,then it tells you to put the flashdrive in the computers that you want to allow on your network.
I sure as hell would. Certainly before calling the police.
Best advice on this thread, IMHO. I'm as pro- law enforcement as anybody, but the cops are NOT your friends, nor are they there to advise you legally. Your relatives have been compromised by criminals and they need expert advice to determine how to avoid being charged for something they had nothing to do with. An ambitious prosecutor could turn this very emotional crime into a cause celebre' to vault himself into a higher office. Don't think those crooked b@$t@rds won't do it.
Tell them to get a GOOD lawyer immediately, someone with some experience in this sort of situation.
If it were my computer I would be tempted to destroy the hard drive, bury it, get a new comp and make sure I had a secure connection with it.
That last one is a tempting alternative, too, although probably not what I would do based on the comment above it, BUT if you were to destroy the HD, do it right. Break it open and burn it with a torch or if you live out in the country, soak it in gasoline and burn it thoroughly. Just chopping it up doesn't keep it from being readable to a good forensic specialist.
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