Security

Spyware Might Be Good as It Discovers Child Porn

Interesting case reported in the UK

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

1st of June 2007, 07:48 GMT

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A 26-year-old American man was charged by the UK authorities for possession of child pornography after he tried to lure a 15-year-old boy to meet him. The entire attempt was done online where the two persons were chatting for a long period of time using the Internet instant messaging

clients. The case was discovered by the boy's mum who installed a spyware on her son's computer to monitor the kid's activity on the Internet. The logs revealed some shocking chats with the pedophile who attempted to invite him to a meeting and have sex with him as Sophos reported.

After the mother read the discussions between the two guys, he alerted the UK police that contacted the Immigration and Customs in the US. A final sentence will be announced in September when the 26-year-old man might face 5 years in prison.

"There are plenty of companies marketing spyware software as a way for parents to keep an eye on children, but for those worried as to what their kids are doing online the best advice may simply be to ensure that the PC is in a place where other members of the family are present," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos according to an article published on the security company's page. "People need to think very carefully about using spyware to monitor other internet users' activity, as they could end up getting in trouble with the law themselves," he added.

The Internet is not a friendly place and this is sustained by the every day reports that inform us about dangerous cases all over the world. Although the spyware applications were often prohibited and flagged as malicious, this report shows us that sometimes, bad things can be also useful because in our case it rescued a boy who could have been sexually abused by a 26-year-old man.

TAGS:

spyware | child

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