I need help dealing with a malicious hacker/pranker

[LiberalEsto]

I have a problem that I don’t know how to handle. Does anyone on DU have ideas on how to deal with it?

Is it illegal to use an assumed identity to list another person’s house for sale – sale by the person’s daughter who does not own the house - on the internet?

This resulted in dozens of calls by real estate agents to our home during a period of mourning this past spring. By asking the agents, we found they got their leads from an online company. When I called the company, they gave me the name of the person who posted the information. I called the person – it was someone in a remote part of the country who had never heard of us, or the company that gave us his name.

Is it illegal to make a request to an insurance lead aggregator company to insure the daughter’s supposed 2013 Jaguar (which does not exist), resulting in dozens of phone calls by insurance agents during the Christmas/New Year holidays?

Is it illegal to post my adult daughter’s resume online stating she is seeking a job within a 50-mile radius of the area we live in – information she did not want posted. She is not currently seeking a job, and if she were, it would not be in this area because she is relocating. She has been getting contacted online today and yesterday.

We suspect, without proof, that this is being done by a malicious individual in another state who is angry at me because I told him off about beating his wife – a childhood friend of mine. He has computer expertise and works in the IT industry as a freelance contractor – in fact he usually works on contract for the Defense Department at various military bases. I can think of no one else who hates me, has a grudge against me and is vicious enough to do things like this.

My husband’s last computer was hacked and his files destroyed last spring, around the same time we started getting the real estate calls. We had to buy a new computer. This is a huge problem because he often works from home. He is an IT worker for a federal; contractor. That is the only financial loss we experienced, but the harassment and the publishing on my daughter’s personal information has violated her privacy.

I have spoken on the phone to a woman in another state who also knows this individual’s wife. This woman’s business computer has been hacked, and her business information files have been destroyed in the past year. She also suspects the same person is responsible.

Unless this person is somehow stopped, I am afraid that the harassment and hacking will continue.

[ChromeFoundry]

1. That sucks.

It is illegal to market a property you don't own.
It is illegal to impersonate another individual and request insurance quotes.
It is illegal to impersonate another individual with the intent of harassment.
It is illegal to gain access to another persons computer system or network, even if it is not protected.

About the daughters resume... was this actually her real resume? was it available online where it could have been copied and not stolen from your computer? was this on the computer that was compromised? If it appears that this information was gotten by illegal means - contact the job posting site's security department and see if they will give you the IP address/time that the resume was posted. You may need to involve the police and have a warrant issued to obtain this information. was the document in a binary format, MS Word - PDF etc... (not text)? It may have some metadata intact that shows the last person to modify and save it prior to posting online.

You and the other individual that had system compromised should make out a detailed list with dates and times of each of the incidents and any information you can gather. If the source IP addresses match on the real estate, insurance and job posting site.. should be fairly easy to get a warrant to seize all of his computer systems for forensic evaluation.

Hope this offers a little bit of insight of what you are up against.

For your own personal gratification, look here: http://www.poopsenders.com/

[LiberalEsto]

2. Thank you!

It wasn't a resume, thank heaven.

My daughter says it was only her name, email address, our home address and our home phone number given as contact information on some jobs site. The request was for any kind of work in a 50-mile radius of Washington DC. (We live right outside DC in Maryland). It is generating numerous responses.

She just moved back here temporarily from the west coast and will be moving out soon to live with her boyfriend in Pennsylvania. She isn't looking for a job at this time.

She pointed out that if it was somebody who knew her, they would have used her cell phone number, not her parents' home landline number, in the contact information.

[ohheckyeah]

3. Here is a website that

might help: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/reporting.html#C4

I would say that this is something that should be reported to the FBI according to the link above.

[LiberalEsto]

4. This is great!

Many thanks!

[ohheckyeah]

5. You're very welcome.

I found it when someone I know was having problems with an internet stalker.

Good luck.....hope they catch the culprit. People like that are a menace and even worse than the jerks who come up with viruses.