Framed for Child Porn by a PC Virus

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[The Magical Mischief Tour]

Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.

Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen.

Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites.

Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realize it until police knock at your door.

An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus. It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence.

Their situations are complicated by the fact that actual pedophiles often blame viruses — a defense rightfully viewed with skepticism by law enforcement.

"It's an example of the old 'dog ate my homework' excuse," says Phil Malone, director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The problem is, sometimes the dog does eat your homework."

[Wally_Kalbacken]

I had a virus planted in my Windows XP Media Center 2005 laptop - that plastered a “Hot Gay Sex - 1-800-XXX-XXXX” image in the center of my desktop. I could not get rid of it short of doing a system restore after a full re-formatting the hard drive. That was the quintessential nuisance.

[WVKayaker]

One more reason why I love my Mac...

[DB]

I don't think the police/DA should ruin someones life when a computer virus explains the situation they are reviewing. I think they have an obligation to have definitive evidence of a crime beyond a computer virus infection to prosecute someone for this.

[USNBandit]

My mother in law used to look at her email when she was on vacation at a local library......so I sent her an email with an attachment that was supposed to be pictures of the kids. Instead when you opened it sounded a siren and had "DOWNLOADING PORN" in huge letters flashing on the screen.

Interestingly, all the guys in the family thought it was pretty funny, but the women folk didn't think so.

[Tenacious 1]

This is a tough one and the criminals are often ahead of the law these days.

My brother in law is an IT Tech for a firm that contracts to doctors and hospitals. He says you would be amazed at what he finds on computers and you would be more amazed at whose computers he finds them on.

I asked him if he ever finds anything illegal. “I am not sure what is legal and what is not. These are our customers often times or their employees. Unless what he finds is the reason for the problem, he deletes or erases or mentions it to his client when it is his client’s employee or subordinate.

[DB]

It isn’t that tough.

Ruining someones life by a false charge is far, far worse than letting the guilty get away with their viewing of child porn.

If you catch someone selling child porn, bury them.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Making kiddie porn is rape - the worst kind.

But this is yet another reason why just looking @ sick pictures should not be a crime.

Also, bad cops now stash kiddie porn on a scene or computer just like they drop illegal guns or drugs when they want to frame a guy. I used to think that was paranoid cop-hating talk. But, it happens.

The time has arrived when everyone has something felonious on their hard drive - whether they know it or not (you don’t think some nasty Obama post you read can be construed as a “terrorist threat” by Big Brother if they really want to nail you?).

[Spktyr]

I once found child porn on an employee computer at a client’s facility. I installed monitoring software/devices and found that it was the actual employee who was browsing it during work hours and not some virus.

I made damn sure the entire f*cking world landed on him.

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

I don't think the police/DA should ruin someones life when a computer virus explains the situation they are reviewing. I think they have an obligation to have definitive evidence of a crime beyond a computer virus infection to prosecute someone for this.

You need to read this...

High court weighs immunity afforded to prosecutors

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110404753_pf.html

[Waryone]

Thank you for what you did. If only more people would think to do that instead of leaving it for the next person to stop these sick disgusting freaks.

[DB]

Thanks.

Amazing.

No prosecutor can be given cart blanche to do what they want. They can't be beyond the law. If a prosecutor manufactures evidence that should be a criminal matter, not a civil matter.

[DB]

Thank God most criminals are stupid...

[E Rocc]

If more people used Macs, there’d be virii for them too.

[A CA Guy]

When something pops up you can do a 1-2 day search for new files and weed out the problem.
About the worst thing you can do is close the computer.

If anything like that happens try what I said and see if that helps first.

[Spktyr]

They write virii for cell phones with less than 50,000 users and music players with less than 15,000 possible victims. They even write virii for software firewalls with a max of 1000 possible
infections.

Number of users has nothing to do with it.

[AUH2O Repub]

I don't think the police/DA should ruin someones life when a computer virus explains the situation they are reviewing. I think they have an obligation to have definitive evidence of a crime beyond a computer virus infection to prosecute someone for this.

---

Hahhaha. That's a good one! You're confusing the police/DA with someone that cares about justice instead of their conviction rate.

[Bobalu]

I write software, I could create a virus that would blow your Mac sky high.

I’m absolutely certain that one of those 170 IQ geeks living in his Mom’s basement could do far worse.

It is the fact that so few people use Macs that keeps you safer, better pray that Mac remains a small player.

The twisted but brilliant freaks that create malware want a big audience, so they waste no time on the Mac.

[WVKayaker]

If more people used Macs, there’d be virii for them too.

If more idiots used their brains, they'd know better than to make ignorant remarks like that. Macs are immune to virii because of the inherent security of its operating system. The "security through obscurity" argument would make sense if there were not such stakes at risk (along with the MILLIONS of Macs). Anyone who successfully gets into a Mac will have to first persuade the users to give it permission to load... and will make history.

The most attacked platform is Windows because of it's poorly designed and implemented operating system. It has nothing to do with any alleged number of units available. One guy wrote a virus to attack the iPhone, which is afar smaller community than Mac users. The Virus did not go far, and was unable to replicate itself!

My Mac is not running any anti-viral software. I don't need it. YMMV (especially if you use Windoze!).