My Space Identity Theft Issue

[stomachmonkey]

So a friend of my wife, let's call her Jane, just called.

Apparently someone opened up a myspace page posing as Jane.

Jane has a public job where photos of her and celebrities are posted on the co site.

Someone took those photos, created a mypace page.

The poser claims on her page that her old account got corrupted and she is now recreating it and needs to resign up friends.

Jane is a bit freaked out. She does not know who the person is, although she has an idea.

She also does not know what the motive is. What is this person trying to do? She fears that once the poser has collected enough friends he/she will start doing who knows what.

She can get myspace to close the account but what's to prevent the person from starting it up again.

Any ideas on how to trap the poser?

[Dantilla]

A friend of my wife had a scary thing happen-

Her cell phone started getting several calls from "gentlemen" wanting the details to hook up. It appears somebody posted her picture in Craig's list "casual encounters" section, and started stringing guys along, eventually giving them her cell phone number.

The police are involved. They have determined the actual computer where the ad was generated, and should have a suspect identified within a couple days.

Whoever did this is in big trouble.

[the]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Any ideas on how to trap the poser?

Sure, file a lawsuit against a "Doe defendant." Use whatever causes of action that would cover identity theft, fraud, whatever.

Then immediately issue a subpoena to Myspace, getting all of their information regarding who started the account. The IP address, all info from their computers relating to the identity.

Myspace (or Yahoo, etc. etc.) don't normally give out their info, because of privacy concerns, etc. But when you serve them with a subpoena, you relieve them of any liability (a subpoena is a court order), and they will happily turn over whatever you want.

It's a beautiful thing - people erroneously think they are anonymous on the Internet, and it's not really true (yeah, if they took a lot of measures to keep their anonymity, they could get away with it, but likely they are using a home or work computer which could be tracked).

I've seen it done before, and it's great.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally Posted by Dantilla

A friend of my wife had a scary thing happen-

Her cell phone started getting several calls from "gentlemen" wanting the details to hook up. It appears somebody posted her picture in Craig's list "casual encounters" section, and started stringing guys along, eventually giving them her cell phone number.

The police are involved. They have determined the actual computer where the ad was generated, and should have a suspect identified within a couple days.

Whoever did this is in big trouble.

I'm not saying this isn't a terrible thing to have happen, but couldn't this just be categorized as a "prank" as opposed to "identity theft"? Is there actually a law that's broken here?

Not trying to sound unsympathetic, but I was under the impression that ID theft legislation was woefully behind the technology/reality of the situation, which is one of the problems with it. From your description it doesn't really sound like it rises to the level of a crime per se, as disturbing as it is.