Police Say Mac Tech Installed Spyware To Photo Women 235
CWmike writes "He was hired to fix their computers, but police say that Trevor Harwell instead installed spyware software that took candid photos of his clients in various states of undress. Harwell had been a Macintosh specialist with a Los Angeles-area home computer repair company called Rezitech. That's how he allegedly had the opportunity to install the spy software, called Camcapture, on computers. While working on repair assignments, the 20-year-old technician secretly set up a complex system that could notify him whenever it was ready to snap a shot using the computer's webcam, according to Sergeant Andrew Goodrich, a spokesman with the Fullerton Police Department in California. 'It would let his server know that the victim's machine was on. The server would then notify his smartphone... and then the images were recorded on his home computer,' he said. Police say they've found thousands of images on Harwell's computers and have identified dozens of victims, all of them women in Los Angeles and Orange County. Harwell was arrested Wednesday by Fullerton police." But was he a good repairman?
Re:In Apple's defense (Score:4, Informative)
An unordained repairman tried to fix a mac?
Not ordained, but he did attend a Christian university. FTFA:
Harwell was formerly a student at Biola University, a small Christian university in southern California. Many of the victims were Biola students and Harwell may have compromised university systems as well, police said.
Re:In Apple's defense (Score:5, Informative)
OMFG it's even better than you (or I) thought. Not only can the screen be the camera [engadget.com], but you can also just stick a camera behind the screen. [arstechnica.com] I knew about the first patent but didn't catch Apple getting the second.
Cue breathy voice: View Apple patents and see why 2011 will be like 1984.
Re:Hot Steam (Score:4, Informative)
Many of the victims were Biola students
And students at a small Christian college in Southern California.
Re:Job skills (Score:5, Informative)
Well, what one wonders is why this guy got caught?
He also had the laptop pop fake warning messages saying that the laptop was malfunctioning, and that putting it near hot steam might clear up the issue. This prompted many victims to take the computer into their washrooms while they showered.
Eventually someone brought their computer to a MacStore instead, and the tech there found the spyware.