Of all the things that make sinister computer viruses, this could be worse: They can turn a computer into a pornography store without its owner being aware, a sickening twist of technology where an innocent surfer may lose its reputation and much money to defend her honor.
Viruses are malicious programs that can steal credit card numbers for someone else to abuse them. Now they are able to place photographs and videos in the computers of another person, for a pedophiles will get away with it: by making an infected computer to save and view remote hiding their material without fear of being discovered with the materials stored on your own computer .
An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people were classified as pedophiles after their colleagues or loved ones are faced with child pornography on their computers due to a virus. The victims may have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove his innocence.
One case involved Michael Fiola, a former researcher at the Massachusetts government office in charge of compensation for their workers.
In 2007, the heads of Fiola found that the Internet account for your laptop, owned by the state, showed that he went down four times more data than their colleagues. A technician found child pornography on the folder on your computer that stores images seen online.
Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography, a charge that carries up to five years in prison. He endured death threats, her car tires were slashed and his friends walked away from him.
Fiola and his wife went to court, spending $ 250,000 in legal fees. Exhausted their savings, took out a second mortgage and sold their car.
An inspection by the defense revealed that the laptop was severely infected. He was scheduled to visit up to 40 child pornography sites per minute, something impossible for a human. While Fiola and his wife were out for dinner one night, someone entered his computer and pornography streamed in an hour and a half.
Prosecutors conducted another test and confirmed the results of the defense. The charge was withdrawn, almost 11 months after it was filed.
"Ruined my life, my wife's life and the lives of my family," said Fiola.
At any given time, some 20 million of the 1,000 million Internet-connected computers worldwide are infected by viruses that could give hackers full control of them, according to the software maker F-Secure Corp. The computers are often infected when the user opens an attachment to an email from an unknown person or visit a malicious page online.
Pedophiles can insert viruses in several ways. The simplest is to force another's computer to visit child pornography sites, collecting images during the process. A computer can be turned into a repository for images and videos that can be remotely when the computer is online.
It is also possible that some prankster or just someone you want to do harm between one of these viruses on your computer, to make it appear that you navigate through illegal Internet sites.
In the first publicly known cases of innocent people become victims, two men in Britain were acquitted in 2003 after it was shown that viruses were responsible for that had child pornography on their computers. In one case, a man spent more than a week in jail and three months in partial seclusion, besides losing custody of her daughter.
The situations for innocent netizens are complicated by the fact that real pedophiles often blame the virus for their crimes, an argument legitimately viewed with skepticism by the judges.
"This is an example of the old excuse''the dog ate my homework'''''', said Phil Malone, director of the office Cyberlaw Clinic Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University." The problem is that sometimes it is the dog eating their homework. "
It would be difficult, however, that a pedophiles get away with it using the excuse of a fictional virus, the expert said Jeff Fischbach.
Even careful collectors of child pornography tend to leave incriminating clues, such as emails and DVDs. No lawyer who uses the excuse of the virus may explain the existence of such evidence, said Damon King, attorney for Unity Child Exploitation and Obscenity U.S. Justice Department.
Either way, the concrete is shown pornography on a computer and must demonstrate how it got there.
A prosecution expert in a case of child pornography found on a computer, Randy Huff, admits that many antivirus programs can work properly and still infect a PC.
"You can not trust computers," said Jeremiah Grossman, founder of WhiteHat Security Inc. company described as "painfully simple" make a computer download something your landlord will not, either a program that displays unwanted advertisements or one that keeps illegal images.
It is possible, "said Grossman, who still has more illegal material that has not been discovered yet.
"Just because it's there does not mean that a person wanted to be there, whatever it is, including child pornography," he admitted.
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