Ex-Boyfriend Sued For Cyber Harassment

by Alexis Shaw

A Virginia woman is suing her ex-boyfriend after he tormented her and her teenage daughter by posting their photos on prostitution sites, sending dozens of men to their home, and distributing nude photos of the woman to her co-workers, her daughter and her daughter's friends.

The year long harassment caused the woman to lose her job in a bank and forced her to change her name, the woman's complaint states. ABC News is withholding the woman's new name.

Soraida Hicks' ex-boyfriend, Bruce Stimon, pleaded guilty in December 2012 to stalking, felony identity theft, and extortion. He was sentenced on Jan. 25 to three years in prison.

Now Hicks and her daughter Pam, 16, have filed a $20 million civil suit against Stimon. She is claiming slander, libel, and infliction of emotional distress, according to court documents.

"I didn't think that he was going to be crazy," Hicks told ABC Washington D.C. affiliate WJLA. Hicks could not be reached for comment by ABCNews.com.

Hicks and Stimon, who is 46, met on a plane traveling from Boston to Washington in the fall of 2011, and the two started a long-distance relationship. Hicks lives in Arlington, Va., and Stimon lived in Kensington, N.H.

According to Hicks' attorney, David Shurtz, Stimon showered Hicks with gifts, even buying Hicks an iPhone and paying for her service on his family plan.

But Shurtz said Stimon used the iPhone as a way to make himself the only man in her life, and he gained access to Hicks' contacts and emails in order to control her.

According to the complaint, "the gift was a deliberate plot to surreptitiously keep track of all the contacts and comings and goings of [Hicks]."

Hicks was unaware of her boyfriend's monitoring until January 2012 when she learned that Stimon "had created a web site advertising her services as a prostitute," according to the complaint. At the time Hicks was in Paraguay visiting her parents, a trip Stimon had financed.

Stimon posted Hicks' name and address, as well as her photos, on web sites advertising prostitution, and listed Hicks' supervisor at her workplace as her point of contact, the complaint states.

"He was creating an artificial theory so that he would be the only man she would contact," Shurtz said. "And the theory was that she was under a cyber attack. And he came to her and said, 'Ah ha! I will be your white knight and I will stop the cyber attack.'"

Instead, Hicks broke up with Stimon and reported the harassment to the Arlington County Police Department.

"From January to probably about March, we were just trying to compile information and figure out what was going on," said Det. Angela Comer of the Arlington County Police Department.

Stimon's cyber attacks escalated. He sent explicit photographs of Hicks to her friends and co-workers, causing Hicks to lose her job as a financial sales consultant at a bank, according to the complaint.

He created a fake Twitter account and sent videos of Hicks and himself having sex to Hicks' daughter and her daughters' friends. The videos were taken without Hicks' consent, the complaint said. It also stated that Stimon also advertised both mother and daughter for sex, sending men to her apartment nearly 60 times.

The investigation involved several sections of the Arlington County Police Department.

"The commonwealth attorneys, the tactical unit, just about every unit in our department had a hand on this case," Comer said.

Comer said Hicks filed a protective order against Stimon in June 2012. When he came to court to dispute the order, he was arrested for "stalking, unlawful filming, and use of a person's identity to harass," but was released on bond a few months later, Comer said.

Woman Sues Ex-Boyfriend for Cyber Harassment

Police tried to keep Hicks' phone number a secret from Stimon, but it frequently needed to be changed as Stimon would figure it out and harass Hicks, Comer said.

In November police caught Stimon slashing Hicks' car tires near her home. He was arrested and charged with destruction of property, stalking, and violating the protective order Hicks had filed against him.

"What was so devastating to Mr. Stimon was that when he was caught, his computer and cell phone were in his car, and they became evidence," said Shurtz.

original story found here

Facebook Getting Tough with Abusive Trolls

Vicious "trolls" who heap abuse on total strangers on the Internet for fun are being targeted in a Facebook crackdown. Tribute pages honoring the dead, such as soldiers in Afghanistan, have become a recent favorite of the ugly trolls, reports the Telegraph. Facebook users can manually delete abusive messages, but company engineers are now working on new systems that will automatically delete the hurtful slams. Facebook already tracks suspected trolls—those who repeatedly communicate with non-friends, or whose friend requests are often rejected.

Facebook is stepping up some site surveillance in the wake of mounting complaints about cyberbullying and pedophiles stalking users. Britain's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center has recently initiated a Facebook site that offers advice and links to report cyber abuse. The official in charge of the center has criticized Facebook for refusing to add a "panic button" on each page to report problems.

original article here

Detective Mom Tracks Down Her Rapist - via Facebook

A mother who was almost raped on the way home from a pub turned detective to track down the alleged sex attacker by finding him on Facebook using his unusual name.

Alpha Gray has pleaded not guilty to attempted rape, sexual assault and causing actual bodily harm in the trial at the Old Bailey.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, picked him out of an identification parade after finding his Facebook profile and reporting him to police.

She told the court she was left with bruises and a bleeding ear after a man tried to rape her shortly after she left a pub in Tufnell Park, north London, in May.

However, the attacker had told her his name was Alpha, that he was 30, and he lived in Holloway, north London, which was all the information she needed to find his profile on the social networking site.

She told the court: 'It's such an unusual name. I didn't think it was his real name. His picture came up and it turned out he knew someone I knew. There was a picture of him on a beach holding a little girl. When the police phoned me, I said from that picture I would not tell if it was him. I was not 100 per cent sure."

But at the identity parade, she picked out Gray, confirming he was the last person she saw.

'When I saw him it drew my breath away,' she said.

Gopal Hooper, prosecuting, told the court that on leaving the pub the woman, who is in her twenties, was approached by a man who pulled down her top and punched her in the face after she tried to run off.

Mr Hooper said: 'Somebody who said his name was Alpha, who was aged 30, who lived in Holloway, attacked this young woman. His defence is his name is Alpha, he is 30, he lives in Holloway and happened to be in the area at the time. He said his name was Alpha. It is a very unusual name, not like Smith or Jones.'

Gray allegedly later told police he was at a friend's birthday party at a club a few minutes away from the pub where the woman had been with friends.

Police discovered his address and he was arrested two days after the attack.

The case continues.

original article here

Web Attacks Can Find Out Where You Live

Visiting a booby-trapped website, the bogus webpage designed for phishing, means inviting cyber attackers to your home, a hacker turned security researcher has warned.

The attacker exploits the shortcomings in many routers -- the device which forwards data packets to their destinations -- to find out a key identification number that can reveal the victim's whereabout in minutes, noted hacker Samy Kamkar said.

Demonstrating such an attack at the recently concluded Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas, Kamkar described how web attacks that begin with making contact with the target (user) can be used to find a person's physical location.

After making contact, the target is convinced to visit a booby-trapped website designed by the attacker. Once the victim clicks the attacker's link, Kamkar showed how the attacker can manipulate geo location data from Google to pinpoint a victim's precise location, the BBC reported.

Many people go online via a router and typically only the computer directly connected to the device can interrogate it for ID information.

However, Kamkar found a way to booby-trap a webpage via a browser so the request for the ID information looks like it is coming from the PC on which that page is being viewed.

He then coupled the ID information, known as a MAC address, with a geo-location feature of the Firefox web browser. This interrogates a Google database created when its cars were carrying out surveys for its Street View service.

This database links Mac addresses of routers with GPS co-ordinates to help locate them.

"This is geo-location gone terrible," said Kamkar during his presentation. "Privacy is dead, people. I'm sorry."

Mikko Hypponen, senior researcher at security firm F Secure, attended the presentation and said it was "very interesting research".

"The thought that someone, somewhere on the net can find where you are is pretty creepy," he said.

"Scenarios where an attack like this would be used would be stalking or targeted attacks against an individual," he added.

"The fact that databases like Google Streetview's Mac-to-Location database or the Skyhook database can be used in these attacks just underlines how much responsibility companies that collect such data have to safeguard it correctly," said Mr Hypponen.

In 2005, Mr Kamkar created a worm that exploited security failings in web browsers to garner more than one million "friends" on the MySpace social network in one day.

Prosecuted for the hacking, Kamkar was given three years' probation and 90 days of community service and paid damages. He was also banned from using the net for personal purposes for an undisclosed amount of time.

original article here

Stalking Via Your Own Cellphone!

(slightly off-topic but important information! EOPC)

Woman's Ex-Boyfriend Stalked Her for Years Using Software on Her Cell Phone

By LISA FLETCHER and COLE KAZDIN

Technology makes it easier to connect with the people in your life, but it can also enable others to connect to you without your knowledge.

People can learn all about your private life through your cell phone, and one woman said she was stalked for three years because of it. Susan, who asked that her real name be kept private because of worry over her safety, said her ex-boyfriend tormented her using only her cell phone to do it.

"He knew where I was all the time," Susan said. "If I was at dinner somewhere. He would text me and ask me how dinner was. I had no idea how he knew where I was."

Most people know that the GPS in a cell phone can track your every move, but that's just the beginning. Widely available software that can be installed on almost any cell phone can track not just your whereabouts but also your private conversations and personal information.

"I thought I was going crazy," Susan said. "It's just unnerving knowing that somebody 24/7 knows where you're at, what you're talking about, what's going on, everything about you."

At the time, Susan didn't know that her ex-boyfriend installed spying software on her phone when she wasn't looking. Once installed, he could be anywhere -- even in a different state -- and follow her every move.

But what was worse, it didn't just track her whereabouts. He could listen in on her phone calls, read her text messages and turn her personal cell phone into a bugging device. From anywhere, he could activate her speaker phone and listen to everything she was doing.

"He would text me, 'How was dinner? Was the date good?'" she recalled.

Susan's ex-boyfriend would also show up places where she was. She feared for her life and called the police, who put her in protective custody. When her ex-boyfriend violated the restraining order, he was put in jail on felony stalking charges.

"He had every intention of killing me," she said. "Within 20 minutes of getting out of jail, he was outside my hotel room."

Security expert Robert Siciliano says he gets countless e-mails from victims of cell phone spying.

"When somebody remotely activates your phone, you're not going to know it and they can use that phone to monitor the conversations in the room you're in," he said. "Your phone could be sitting next to you while you are watching TV, and somebody can actually log into your phone and can actually watch what you are watching on television."

Cell Phone Spying Software Affordable, Powerful
A 2009 report from the Department of Justice found that one-quarter of the 3.4 million stalking victims in the U.S. reported cyberstalking, and GPS technology and other forms of electronic monitoring were used to stalk one in 13 victims.

"GMA" found thousands of sites promoting cell phone spying software, boasting products to "catch cheating spouses," "bug meeting rooms" or "track your kids." Basic cell phone spying software costs as little as $50, but for a higher price the software enables anyone to do exactly what Susan's ex-boyfriend did.

"Someone can easily install a spyware program on your phone that allows them to see every single thing you do all day long, via the phone's video camera," Siciliano said.

"GMA" spent $350 to get the features that remotely activate speaker phones, intercept live calls and instantly notify you every time a call is made.

We installed the software on a colleague's phone, with her permission, and sent her out to see how it worked. We were able to intercept and listen in to a live phone call without her knowledge, and she didn't even have to be on the phone for us to spy on her. We could also turn her phone into a remote listening device no matter where she was. If the phone was on, we heard everything she said.

"This is no sci-fi flick," Siciliano said. "This is the real thing and it's happening to people right now."

It's perfectly legal to sell the software but not necessarily legal to use it, although that's in the fine print.

For people like Susan, the laws, which vary from state to state, haven't caught up to the technology. Police say there aren't specific laws on the books to address this type of stalking, as opposed to the physical stalking that led to the restraining order.

When it comes to cell phone spying, "The cops kept telling me there's nothing we can do," Susan said. "He's not breaking the law."

Protect Yourself from Cell Phone Spying
Susan changed her number 10 times, but it didn't help because the spyware was on the phone itself.

"I'd go and change my number at the cell phone store, and he would be calling me on my way home on my new cell phone number."

After three terrifying years, Susan realized the software was on her phone. She got a new one and it seems the nightmare has ended.

"You're never the same after this," she said. "I think you become a lot more aware of your surroundings, you're not as trusting. You just make it day to day and keep living."

Safety experts say that if you believe you've been the target of cyberstalking, trust your instincts and ask for help.

Indications that spyware might be on your cell phone:

• The screen lights up for no reason
• The flash on the camera goes off when you're not taking a picture
• You notice ambient noise in the background when you're on a phone call
• You repeatedly get strange text messages from an unknown origin

Tips:
Never let your cell phone out of your control -- spyware can be installed on it in as little as a few minutes.

If you think spyware is on your phone, security expert Robert Siciliano says you have two options: Get a a new phone or call your cell phone service provider. They will tell you how to reinstall the operating system. Reinstalling the operating system should wipe out the spyware.

original article here