Spyware creator and customers charged
by Nikola Strahija on August 30th, 2005 The creator and several buyers of a keylogging software package, advertised as a tool for checking up on loved ones, have been charged for accessing computer systems without authorisation, the Associated Press reports.
All the purchasers of the $89 ‘LoverSpy’ software had to do was send their target (either lover, child or any other person) a seemingly harmless electronic greeting card. When opened, the card added software to the targeted computer that would record email messages, chat room conversations, passwords and any other computer activity.
Such software is prohibited in the US under federal wiretapping laws and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In the UK its use would be an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, better known as RIPA.
The firm behind LoverSpy was closed down in October 2003, but prosecutors have now obtained an indictment against the software’s creator, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
He is charged with 35 counts of ‘manufacturing, sending and advertising a surreptitious interception device and unauthorised access to protected computers’, according to the Associated Press.
Four purchasers of the software – John J Gannito, 49, Kevin Powell, 54, Cheryl Ann Young, 40, and Laura Selway, 34 – have also been charged by San Diego prosecutors.
As many as 1,000 copies of the software are reputed to have been sold by Perez-Melara and investigations are continuing.
