Web cam scams - Do you know who is watching you?

Web cam scams – Do you know who is watching you?

March 1, 2010 Computer News

Fresh off the wake of the recently reported Webcam Spy case in Philadelphia, where a high school in the Lower Merion School District, Harrington High School – is being sued by one of its student’s, Blake Robbins and his parents, for the unauthorized use of a remote management product, called LANRev, which was utilized to gain remote control over various MacBooks’ webcams (the computers in question were issued to students by the school.)

This very sage has sprouted the most recent debate – how safe is one from being targeted by a remote controller. How vulnerable are we as consumers to being ‘spied’ upon? Will someone be able to gain remote control of our systems regardless of measures we take to ensure privacy is maintained?

It seems that one’s computer world is not very safe and secure at all.

The remote management program, LANRev was published by ‘Pole Position Software’, which was later acquired by ‘Absolute Software’. It is this very company that is making remote control of computers available to any one that so desire.

Under the new management, the name of the remote management program has been modified to: ‘Absolute Manager’, and is currently being marketed as a remote management tool for PC’s, Macs and iPhone’s – another change being that this product is no longer utilized for theft recovery. Instead, Absolute Software have developed and are marketing the following programs for theft recovery: ‘Computrace’ and ‘LoJack’.

The thing about these programs is that they are highly useful – when the computer user is aware of its presence, the rules of engagement regarding privacy laws tend to get bent out of shape once the user is not made aware and has given no notice to the remote management tool’s presence and activization. In these cases, I would liken it to spyware and basic hacking.

Important to note at this point is the fact that Absolute Software have taken all these factors into consideration. This is shown in the statement made by Absolute Software’s vice-president for Global Marketing, Stephen Midgley.

Midgley states that: “Both the Computrace and LoJack products can be used to turn on a Webcam and photograph the user in the event of a theft investigation. But unlike the old LANRev, only Absolute engineers can track devices and activate recovery features. Company policy, prohibits us from doing that until a police report is filed. For us to begin a theft recovery process, we need a case file from the police. Two of the recovery methods are GPS and Internet Protocol location tracking. Absolute tracks the location of devices every 24 hours, but once a device is reported stolen it increases to once every 15 minutes, according to Midgley. “That allows us to pinpoint the location of the device…we then provide the details over to the local law enforcement, who then go in and recover the device.”

One can safely assume then that even though spyware will still prevail regardless of any preventative measures – one can at least be aware of the various tactics employed by dubious type individuals – and in knowledge there is always power.

A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.