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Online Revenge
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Jun 01, 2006 12:35 AM
from the wipe-the-hard-drive dept.
from the wipe-the-hard-drive dept.
Many people have submitted this story of a broken laptop purchased on e-bay. The buyer gives a little lesson on why you should always clean your hard drive before you sell a computer.
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Online Revenge
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Re:Not so funny when/if the seller commits suicide (Score:5, Funny)
(http://jlarocco.com/)
I believe the word for that would be "hilarious."
Wisdom foolows, pay attention! (Score:4, Informative)
He will. The personal data protection laws in the European union (of which Britain is a member state) are extremely serious. The guy used the data without authorization and by making it public, he has become a criminal. He is very lucky if he aviods spending actual time in prison. I am sure the civil penalties will make him bankrupt anyhow.
Just yesterday, the EU supreme court crushed the EU-USA airline passanger data exchange agreement because it does not adequately protect EU citizens' privacy rights. If Sheik Osama is not enough excuse for rights treampling, that 375UKP certainly cannot be enough as well.
Also, the british mentality values privacy of the individual over anything else. The guy who posted someone else's details in public made himself anathema from the community of gentlemen and may have difficulty finding a job or gaining university admission by showing such moral definiencies in handling details of others' personal lifes. Also, the guy who posted the photos on the web is obviously homophobic based on his comments, which is a big no-no in liberal Europe and gayness is well established in britain since Oscar Wilde.
Not to mention the gross violation against the other people seen in those images. That is not "collateral damage", that is pure wickedness. I hope some of those people will also sue the avenger guy and make him feel the pain of having to pay half of his wage for penalties for a hundred months to come.
Finaly the guy who posted the photos online violated the most basic rule of civilization as we know it: presumption of innocence. Where is the proof the laptop was indeed sent in already faulty condition? What proof is there the damage did not happen while being rudely transported by the postal service, etc.?
Re:Wisdom foolows, pay attention! (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that pimpy neoliberal nerds of America do not make law in Europe (yet). Certain unalienable things cannot be sold, just like you cannot sell yourself to slavery.
Even when the law allows you to voluntarily provide your data for handling to certain private economic entities (like marketing agencies), the data recepient must have an established corporate legal framework and EU-compliant privacy protection charta approved by the authorities. The laptop buyer certainly meets none of that.
Europe, especially continental Europe is very paranoid about personal data handling. We have gazillion paragraphs to protect people over that. Personal info databases of separete functionality must not be connected just for ease of operation, but for a compelling need, approved by 2/3rd parlamentary vote or supreme court decision, and many other restictions like that.
The avenger guy will be held responsibly almost as seriously as if he had found state secrets on that laptop and uploaded that confidental info on the open web.
Look at from this viewpoint: the photos the laptop buyer uploaded allege that the seller is homosexual or at least bisexual. In the Holocaust, same-sex people were the third largest minority group persecuted by the nazi (after jews and gipsy). That was a mere 60 years ago. Hope you understand why we think such data better not be handled, collected, traded, disclosed by anyone in Europe or anywhere in the world. The data privacy situation in the USA is frightening for any european.
BTW, if this reported event happened in Switzerland, the laptop buyer would have been murdered two dozen times already. That country values absolute privacy over justice, truth or honesty due to its entire reliance on banking, much of which is very dirty (dictators, drug barons, arms smugglers, world politicans, speculants, spies all keep their fiscals there).
say hello to the 1950s for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you posting that from the Victorian era?
We now have Big Brother as one of our most popular TV shows (attention seeking nobodies stuck in a house and monitored live 24/7), the most CCTV in Europe etc...
Re:Wisdom foolows, pay attention! (Score:5, Funny)
ha
ha
ha
*cough*
CCTV
*cough*
ha ha ha ha ha
Can I have something of what you've been smoking? Apparently it's some very good stuff!
Re:Not so funny when/if the seller commits suicide (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not so funny when/if the seller commits suicide (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.milksucks.com/ | Last Journal: Monday September 15 2003, @12:30PM)
The Thai's spolied a good laugh by letting him off with a fine, spoilsports!
Sector encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sector encryption (Score:5, Funny)
(http://hotti.es/)
Re:Sector encryption (Score:5, Informative)
(http://hotti.es/)
Re:Sector encryption (Score:4, Funny)
karma (Score:4, Interesting)
I honestly love when ppl's stupidity overrules their lack of honesty and it bites them.
Re:karma (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone commits a crime, the law should not protect them from the repercussions of that crime. If we take the article at face value, the guy in this story intentionally sold a non-functional laptop. Because the laptop was non-functional, he erroneously assumed that his porn collection was inaccessible. If he had been selling a fully-functional laptop, he wouldn't have made that assumption, and he wouldn't have had a trouble. The direct cause of his current predicament is his own attempt to defraud another person.
If you've ever tried to reclaim money through a small claims court, you know how farcical it is. You can get all the judgements made in your favour, but you still have to pay out for anything you want done. Send out the sherif to repossess goods? Pay up. Need a locksmith to get into the place where the goods are kept? You need to foot the bill. And there are no guarantees that when you do all that you'll find anything able to be sold, especially if your complaint is against a company. You'll have shelled out $300 and all you'll have to show for it is an unenforcable judgement.
On the issue of vigilante justice: yes, it's bad. But people generally only take the law into their own hands when the authorities aren't holding on to it tightly enough. A recent story on the news over here was that of the manager of a hotel, whose rooms had been broken into over 60 times in the last year. On a number of occasions, he filmed the thieves as they robbed him, and handed in the tape to police. There have been no arrests in connection to any of the robberies. When it comes to a choice between vigilante justice and no justice, you don't have to be a genius to guess what people will decide to go for.
Re:The Register's new market: tabloids (Score:5, Insightful)
They just reported it as it is, someone claims to have been cheated out of a working laptop, now he has posted stuff from it on the net and gets himself looked into by the police... Oh and theres a website for you to look at.
Why is that not proper reporting? They don't even take sides - which is highly unusual for The Reg.
Re:The Register's new market: tabloids (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate digging into the big bag of cliche counter-arguments, but here's a case where this one definitely fits: How would you like it if someone displayed your entire personal life (simple or shocking as it may be) in a deliberately disparaging fashion? Or perhaps (we don't actually know in this case), they make a bunch of crap up about you. I knew a guy who's personal and professional reputation was destroyed by a false allegation that was spread freely before any proper investigation was made. The case against him was tossed out in court, but his personal business (bike shop) never recovered and he had to close down and leave town. Assuming that he was innocent, as we have every bit as much reason to believe as the judge did, is this in any way just? Did those who spread the rumor contribute in any way to the betterment of society or did they harm it?
Re:The Register's new market: tabloids (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.salkin.co.uk/)
The Register contains lots of biased articles. While it does contain decent articles, its usually better to get them from the source, such as securityfocus. This, to me, doesnt make it a news source, it makes it a blog with news in it. (However i have to say i am an avid fan of the BOFH)
secondally, The police are now investigating. I suspect this is due to the content of the comments, some of which seem to bring out some very nasty sentiments - a lot of which were unrelated to the issue, rather than the content of the blog, itself, however.
While i think the owner should have kept more control over it, perhaps restricting posting, i dont think they have done anything wrong. They decided that a public humilliation was a good way of going about this.
If you believe the blog, and i have reason not to, the owner of the blog tried to sort this out amicably. Anyone who has been through EBAY's dispute procedure will tell you its a pile of cr*p, certainly in the uk. Other than cancelling accounts, there is very little they can do other than to refer the seller to the police. I dont know if this happened in this case.
However, its true to say some of the UK tabloid press, have a lot to answer for, and the BBC should make an apology for misreporting and post it publically on their website.
CFNM (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.jgc.org/ | Last Journal: Friday August 22 2003, @11:31AM)
Thanks Amir!
John.
and the seller... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.google.com/)
And if you read the full story, you'll see that the seller gives a little lesson on how the law views vigilantism on the internets. Hint: Police are involved.
Re:and the seller... (Score:5, Informative)
It's still purely a civil matter as reported by the register and the defamatory site is still up. Score one for vigilantism on the internet.
Unless of course this is one of those things that falls under libel in Britain because it damages his reputation even if it does end up being 100% true.
Re:and the seller... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:and the seller... (Score:5, Informative)
Yawn. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yawn. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://koiulpoi.dmusic.com/)
Melodrama != Angst (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/kamdrimar/)
Boot and Nuke (Score:5, Informative)
You can use something like Darik's Boot and Nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] for deleting the content permanently.
Why is this on the front page... (Score:3, Informative)
Extortion (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 20 2002, @06:08PM)
The rest of the crap in the story is unverifiable from the information provided. It is just here-say.
Re:Extortion (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 20 2002, @06:08PM)
He simply stated that it was broke.
No pictures of the broken item, no description of what was broke. Just a statement that the ram and DVD-Rom was wrong, again, -hear-say.
For all I can tell, it was missing a charger which can lead to all sorts of assumptions.
The extortion part comes in to play with the statement that boils down to you pay, it goes away.
Unverifiable? Let's give it a go... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.myspace.com/imkiddingiswear)
For your viewing pleasure:
Personally, I think it's quite a leap to claim extortion. I'll let you guys make your own judgements, but if you ask me, it seems like nothing more than a legitimate ebayer pissed after getting tooled over by a run-of-the-mill ebay scammer. And hey, who wouldn't be? Call me crazy, but I think the blog is great. Not only does spikytom get his own creative revenge, we all get a laugh out of it.Re:Unverifiable? Let's give it a go... (Score:4, Interesting)
Amir's last name is Tofangsazan.
Re:Unverifiable? Let's give it a go... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the one piece of positive feedback showing on Amir6626's eBay profile [ebay.com] is from nicktofang [ebay.com], who seems to share a name quite similar to Amir Tofangsazan. nicktofang also has mediocre feedback, is no longer a member, and started with one piece of good feedback from amir6626.
Certainly looks fishy to me.