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?
Mac cam : LED on (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't these people know, that when the little green LED is on next to the camera there is something going on with the camera?
I do not know if there is any spyware that can disable that, but in my experience: whatever touches the camera, the led comes on.
I am surprised about all these secretly filmed students, thieves, women who have 1000s of pictures taken of them and never figured that GREEN LIGHT=CAMERA ON.....
Really, is there any software that can use the MAC cameras without turning the light on ?
He could've gotten away with it. (Score:2, Insightful)
He wouldn't have been arrested if he just registered himself as a school first. Then it's just a lawsuit.
Re:Job skills (Score:4, Insightful)
the funny thing is that this guy was arrested but the Lower Merion spokesman could react with a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars [slashdot.org] after the district was sued...
Mac? Women? (Score:4, Insightful)
Story is obviously a fake.
Has nothing to do with that (Score:5, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with liking to see naked chicks. Sure, I like to see naked chicks too. I don't go install spyware on people's computers for that.
Similarly we all like money, but most of us don't go empty someone's bank account with a keylogger or phishing site. And most of us like sex, but we don't give someone some *ahem* surprise sex. And most of us would like something bad to happen to that guy who was the school bully or to some cruel ex or idiot boss or whatever, but we don't go set their house on fire. Etc.
Reducing it to liking or wanting something is ridiculously simplistic. The question isn't what he wanted, but how he went about that.
And frankly, few things piss me off than the kind of person who's only kept from being a bully or a crook by not having the balls to do it IRL, but who turns into a bully or a crook as soon as there's a couple of routers between him and the victim. I don't have much respect for the former category to start with, but the kind who thinks he's so L33T for hiding behind the screen to do it, ranks even lower for me.
Re:Job skills (Score:2, Insightful)
"This prompted many victims to take the computer into their washrooms while they showered."
Only an Apple consumer can be THAT stupid.