11 ms·

Rent-to-Own Laptops Secretly Photographed Users Having Sex, FTC Says

70 points by yk 14y ago

Wingman4l7 14y ago
There was a similar case with such "security/spy software" installed on high school student laptops, back in 2010: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/webcamscanda/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/webcamscanda/
- HarryHirsch 14y ago
  Yes. And in other countries the public prosecution would have brought a case and the school administrator who ordered the picture taking and the system administrator who followed orders would have gone to prison, where they belong.
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    That's the downside of all that pesky "reasonable doubt" and "innocent until proven guilty" nonsense.
    - HarryHirsch 14y ago
      Huh? There is no doubt that someone took pictures. That's sufficient to bring charges. The court decides if the defendant is guilty, but the matter is serious enough to bring it in front of a judge.
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        You're assuming that charges would inevitably lead to a conviction.
        HarryHirsch 14y ago
        Sorry, you are misreading the comment. I believe that invasion of privacy is a serious crime, and someone who engages in it on a sustained basis deserves jail time. One would hope that there are laws on the books against it. One would also hope that the prosecution enforces the existing law, because the law isn't what is on the books, law is whatever is the established practice.
        anigbrowl 14y ago
        I am not misreading it, and suggest you reconsider the comment above about 'reasonable doubt.' What you believe and what can be proved in court are two different things. Typically, (though not always) you have to prove criminal intent as well as illegal action, and that is often easier said than done. The pictures in the case you mention are circumstantial evidence, but not conclusive of guilt. Further, a competent defense attorney could would begin by seeking to exclude them as evidence. Cases like this are usually a good deal more complex than you might appreciate from media reports.
        HarryHirsch 14y ago
        Criminal intent is probably the easiest to prove here. If one defines "intent" as the desire to bring about an action, there has certainly been the intent to take pictures. After all, they do not collect themselves automatically, someone decided that they should be taken. It's something of a tossup if Lower Meirion is covered by the wiretapping statutes - those tend to cover communication and it's a bit dubious if photographing someone in one's private space is covered by that. Perhaps one could invoke the Fourth Amendment, but then someone would have to argue that private entities are also covered. It's likely that the student and the parents were informed of the spyware and has to sign an agreement to accept it, but then the laptops were required for classwork, one could not attend school without once, so one would have to consider if consent wasn't given under duress. We notice that the family collected handsomely under personality rights. That is firmly covered under civil law, so the law has some teeth. However, when there is some entity, private or public, that makes a business of violating personality rights, at that point such actions impact society as a whole, and it's criminal law that must be invoked to to restrain them.
      - tedunangst 14y ago
        The prosecution decided that the evidence they had was not sufficient to meet the required standard.
        HarryHirsch 14y ago
        The poor guy must have gone through some serious mental gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion. I'd be interested how he arrived there. Seriously. We are righly afraid of out-of-control police, and that's why these are on a tight leash (at least in theory and before the Patriot Act) and need a warrant before they can gather evidence that is admissible in court. But private entities seem to be allowed to play by looser rules, and that's how we end up in Lower Meirion.
        tedunangst 14y ago
        Well, for starters, wiretapping without sound isn't wiretapping. Then there's probably some verbiage about the difference between being unaware of the camera's presence and the camera's operation. I don't know, read the follow ups. There were Senate hearings to fix the law with a new Protect the Children Act or somesuch, which was no doubt roundly booed on reddit and HN.
dawernik 14y ago
More like, rent to be owned... That's pathetic, shame there can't be a bigger penalty. Sad thing is this scam is clearly going after a group that likely doesn't get tech. Wonder how much it costs to rent a PC nowadays.
- kls 14y ago
  And likely does not have the resources to litigate nor the education profile to know their rights to recourse. Sadly there is a segment of society that preys on such people and even worse a segment that feels that they get what they deserve for "being ignorant".
  - nasmorn 14y ago
    I think the spying should definitely be illegal as it would be in Europe because of privacy concerns. The financing is a little more problematic because you could argue a lot of things should be illegal like Louis Vuitton handbags for example. Have you seen the prices? It is unreal you could get 5 bespoke handbags from a master leathercrafter made from virgin snake leather or something. People who want to pay 3000 USD for a laptop are probably gullible enough to pay lots of money for other overpriced things as well. A reasonable requirement would be to always have to post total amount owed though to help people unable to do math. If they still agree there is not really much you can do.
    - kls 14y ago
      Sorry I was not as clear as I could have been, most of my post was specific to the spying, with some latter cometary on the mindset of people that would do such a thing to that group of people. I agree that price is subjective and in the end it is the purchases responsibility to judge fair value. So long as nothing has been misrepresented, I think a person should be allowed to charge $50,000 for a 2 dollar item if they can get it and their is no duress to the situation (e.g gouging for gas in a shortage). That being said, I would be in favor of a consumer law that required manufacturers to disclose their total cost to produce an item. This would still allow retailers to charge what they feel is fair, but level the playing field for the consumer to see how much they are paying over the cost of production.
benologist 14y ago
Hopefully some of this turns out to be illegal: The software, known as Detective Mode, didn’t just secretly turn on webcams. It “can log the keystrokes of the computer user, take screen shots of the computer user’s activities on the computer, and photograph anyone within view of the computer’s webcam. Detective Mode secretly gathers this information and transmits it to DesignerWare, who then transmits it to the rent-to-own store from which the computer was rented, unbeknownst to the individual using the computer,” according to the complaint. and The software installed on the laptops also enables the companies to automatically disable computers of renters behind on monthly payments and to secretly track the computers’ whereabouts. and the rental stores would force a fake popup for software registration on computers they rented. The window would not go away, the FTC said, until the computer user typed their contact information, including address, phone number and e-mail. The rent-to-own store would use that information “to try to collect money” from renters in arrears, the FTC said.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Yes, I too read the article.
dag11 14y ago
Reminds me of the Lower Merion School District fiasco.
jason_slack 14y ago
Can I ask a question about the potential size of the pool of victims? Do a lot of people still rent to own laptops/computers? What about electronics like tv's, stereos? I know this used be be way popular in the mid 90's and nobody read the fine print to realie you could have bought the device 4 times over by time your rental period expired.
- nico 14y ago
  FTA: which has been employed on as many as 420,000 rentals
bradsmithinc 14y ago
Wow, that's a very link-baity title
- jrockway 14y ago
  Seems fair to me. I mean, it also photographed the users not having sex, but that's really not much comfort.
elchief 14y ago
I sent an email to Aspen Way (aspenwayenterprises.com), aka http://www.aarons.com/storelocator.aspx http://www.aarons.com/storelocator.aspx . It was childish and not very nice. "Please delete this email address from your address book and add the following: jesseferagen@qwestoffice.net If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me at 406-294-9432. Thank you, Jesse Feragen" The owner of Aspen Way goes by the name Rohnn Lampi http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rohnn-lampi/8/779/a6 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rohnn-lampi/8/779/a6
mariuolo 14y ago
Anyone else caught doing this would be facing felony charges. But I suppose business is held to other standards.
Zenst 14y ago
So users who rent computers have sex! I must look into this. But this whole issue of spyware on rental/lease/borrowed computers keeps on cropping up time and time again and yet it is still legal to have spayware installed in the first place, its how its used. As for tracking the users location, site usage etc, don't mobile phone companies already do that by definition of how they work! Mobile phones are computers after all and with that in mind this whole area of privacy and expectations of privacy needs to be cleared up as it is a mindfeild for everybody in many ways.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
belorn 14y ago
Society really need to stop treating illegal activities different just because it's an company and not an individual who performed them. If an individual, say the boyfriend of someone lent his computer to his girlfriend with those programs, he would be prosecuted in almost every modern country in the world. If he would use that information for monetary gain (like selling the pictures), he would likely end up in jail. If an individual would apply the exact same program on an open proxy or on usb-keys dropped at a parking lot, he would be prosecuted under hacking laws and likely end up in jail for several years, especially if he earned money from it. I guess the problem crackers and blackhats have with the law today is that they aren't companies. They should really form a company front for their activities, and hide any stealing of private information as "data mining for advertising" which they just happen to sell at highest price in auctions to "email-advertising" companies in China/Russia/Nigeria. Any images could be sold too, like to magazines/porn studios as any user "uploaded" files are company property as by the EULA. If they ever get caught, they can just say "oops, sorry", close down, create a new a new company, and go on with business as usual.
- jerf 14y ago
  mens rea is probably missing. It's pretty clear at this point that a number of people get the bright idea of turning on the webcam to some degree on the laptops they still own while sending them home with other people. While it's always skeevy, it's worth pointing out that it probably isn't malicious. It's actually a simple manifestation of a standard form of human irrationality, the availability heuristic [1]. The people making these decisions sit there and fear what may be done to their property, and while they are sitting there imagining all the things that may be done, that ends up swamping all the other possibilities in their head. They imagine they're just going to catch two sorts of images: People normally using the laptop, and people stealing or hurting it. (And I am sure that if you asked them to guess how many images of abuse they'd catch that they would overestimate by at least two orders of magnitude.) The availability heuristic has crowded out all the other sorts of images they will capture in what is very nearly a random sampling of the full range of home life. So the people end up as surprised as can be that they end up with what is legally child porn on their hands. I really don't think that these companies are setting out to collect that on purpose. They're just taking doing something skeevy, but seemingly safe, under the guidance of a normal human irrationality we all have, and end up bitten by it. Even if they do in fact have somewhat malicious purposes and want to catch some sort of other image they shouldn't want, they will still end up over-imagining how much of that they will catch, and not realize how much other stuff they will catch. Your examples are not comparable, in that they all include clear intent. And if you are really inclined to argue "But they should have known!"... well... are you so sure you're completely conversant in all possible legal issues arising in fields completely outside of your experience? I'd certainly like word to get out this is a very bad idea, but I'm not sure I'm willing to destroy lives over this mistake. That's not a standard I want to live under! It's really damned easy to tell other people they shouldn't suffer from standard human irrationalities. It's much harder to see them in yourself when they happen. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
delinka 14y ago
Watching people surreptitiously in the privacy of their homes, definitely in the wrong. Tracking the computers' whereabouts- I don't see why this couldn't have just been made known, e.g. "We'll be tracking the location of the machine so that when you fail to pay, we can recover our property." Disabling the computer when renters get behind- where is the problem here? If you don't make your mortgage or rent payments, you don't get to stay for free. There are automobile finance companies for a similar demographic that will disable the car when payment isn't made. It's not like the car stops working when you're a day late. The computer warns the driver long before disabling the car. Kinda makes sense to give your 'customer' a warning and maintain her ability to drive to you to make payments. And what's this "force a fake popup"? What's a fake popup versus a real one? Perhaps the store's systems should know who has rented which machines. But I suspect this is more about tracking the computer's location for recovery when payments are behind. So here's my take: invasion of privacy is a big problem and should be prosecuted. Disabling service and recovering property that hasn't been paid for just makes sense. Certainly this particular company could have been more scrupulous about locating their property when payments were not made.
- pc86 14y ago
  Ignoring all the screen capture and webcam nonsense and focuses strictly on the location tracking: should it be expected for a company that will by its definition attract deadbeats and scammers be required to detail its security measures?
deleted 14y ago
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deleted 14y ago
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70 points by yk 14y ago

There was a similar case with such "security/spy software" installed on high school student laptops, back in 2010: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/webcamscanda/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/webcamscanda/

HarryHirsch 14y ago
Yes. And in other countries the public prosecution would have brought a case and the school administrator who ordered the picture taking and the system administrator who followed orders would have gone to prison, where they belong.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  That's the downside of all that pesky "reasonable doubt" and "innocent until proven guilty" nonsense.
  - HarryHirsch 14y ago
    Huh? There is no doubt that someone took pictures. That's sufficient to bring charges. The court decides if the defendant is guilty, but the matter is serious enough to bring it in front of a judge.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      You're assuming that charges would inevitably lead to a conviction.
      - HarryHirsch 14y ago
        Sorry, you are misreading the comment. I believe that invasion of privacy is a serious crime, and someone who engages in it on a sustained basis deserves jail time. One would hope that there are laws on the books against it. One would also hope that the prosecution enforces the existing law, because the law isn't what is on the books, law is whatever is the established practice.
        anigbrowl 14y ago
        I am not misreading it, and suggest you reconsider the comment above about 'reasonable doubt.' What you believe and what can be proved in court are two different things. Typically, (though not always) you have to prove criminal intent as well as illegal action, and that is often easier said than done. The pictures in the case you mention are circumstantial evidence, but not conclusive of guilt. Further, a competent defense attorney could would begin by seeking to exclude them as evidence. Cases like this are usually a good deal more complex than you might appreciate from media reports.
        HarryHirsch 14y ago
        Criminal intent is probably the easiest to prove here. If one defines "intent" as the desire to bring about an action, there has certainly been the intent to take pictures. After all, they do not collect themselves automatically, someone decided that they should be taken. It's something of a tossup if Lower Meirion is covered by the wiretapping statutes - those tend to cover communication and it's a bit dubious if photographing someone in one's private space is covered by that. Perhaps one could invoke the Fourth Amendment, but then someone would have to argue that private entities are also covered. It's likely that the student and the parents were informed of the spyware and has to sign an agreement to accept it, but then the laptops were required for classwork, one could not attend school without once, so one would have to consider if consent wasn't given under duress. We notice that the family collected handsomely under personality rights. That is firmly covered under civil law, so the law has some teeth. However, when there is some entity, private or public, that makes a business of violating personality rights, at that point such actions impact society as a whole, and it's criminal law that must be invoked to to restrain them.
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      The prosecution decided that the evidence they had was not sufficient to meet the required standard.
      - HarryHirsch 14y ago
        The poor guy must have gone through some serious mental gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion. I'd be interested how he arrived there. Seriously. We are righly afraid of out-of-control police, and that's why these are on a tight leash (at least in theory and before the Patriot Act) and need a warrant before they can gather evidence that is admissible in court. But private entities seem to be allowed to play by looser rules, and that's how we end up in Lower Meirion.
        tedunangst 14y ago
        Well, for starters, wiretapping without sound isn't wiretapping. Then there's probably some verbiage about the difference between being unaware of the camera's presence and the camera's operation. I don't know, read the follow ups. There were Senate hearings to fix the law with a new Protect the Children Act or somesuch, which was no doubt roundly booed on reddit and HN.

dawernik 14y ago

More like, rent to be owned... That's pathetic, shame there can't be a bigger penalty. Sad thing is this scam is clearly going after a group that likely doesn't get tech. Wonder how much it costs to rent a PC nowadays.

kls 14y ago
And likely does not have the resources to litigate nor the education profile to know their rights to recourse. Sadly there is a segment of society that preys on such people and even worse a segment that feels that they get what they deserve for "being ignorant".
- nasmorn 14y ago
  I think the spying should definitely be illegal as it would be in Europe because of privacy concerns. The financing is a little more problematic because you could argue a lot of things should be illegal like Louis Vuitton handbags for example. Have you seen the prices? It is unreal you could get 5 bespoke handbags from a master leathercrafter made from virgin snake leather or something. People who want to pay 3000 USD for a laptop are probably gullible enough to pay lots of money for other overpriced things as well. A reasonable requirement would be to always have to post total amount owed though to help people unable to do math. If they still agree there is not really much you can do.
  - kls 14y ago
    Sorry I was not as clear as I could have been, most of my post was specific to the spying, with some latter cometary on the mindset of people that would do such a thing to that group of people. I agree that price is subjective and in the end it is the purchases responsibility to judge fair value. So long as nothing has been misrepresented, I think a person should be allowed to charge $50,000 for a 2 dollar item if they can get it and their is no duress to the situation (e.g gouging for gas in a shortage). That being said, I would be in favor of a consumer law that required manufacturers to disclose their total cost to produce an item. This would still allow retailers to charge what they feel is fair, but level the playing field for the consumer to see how much they are paying over the cost of production.

benologist 14y ago

Hopefully some of this turns out to be illegal: The software, known as Detective Mode, didn’t just secretly turn on webcams. It “can log the keystrokes of the computer user, take screen shots of the computer user’s activities on the computer, and photograph anyone within view of the computer’s webcam. Detective Mode secretly gathers this information and transmits it to DesignerWare, who then transmits it to the rent-to-own store from which the computer was rented, unbeknownst to the individual using the computer,” according to the complaint. and The software installed on the laptops also enables the companies to automatically disable computers of renters behind on monthly payments and to secretly track the computers’ whereabouts. and the rental stores would force a fake popup for software registration on computers they rented. The window would not go away, the FTC said, until the computer user typed their contact information, including address, phone number and e-mail. The rent-to-own store would use that information “to try to collect money” from renters in arrears, the FTC said.

s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Yes, I too read the article.

dag11 14y ago

Reminds me of the Lower Merion School District fiasco.

jason_slack 14y ago

Can I ask a question about the potential size of the pool of victims? Do a lot of people still rent to own laptops/computers? What about electronics like tv's, stereos? I know this used be be way popular in the mid 90's and nobody read the fine print to realie you could have bought the device 4 times over by time your rental period expired.

nico 14y ago
FTA: which has been employed on as many as 420,000 rentals

bradsmithinc 14y ago

Wow, that's a very link-baity title

jrockway 14y ago
Seems fair to me. I mean, it also photographed the users not having sex, but that's really not much comfort.

elchief 14y ago

I sent an email to Aspen Way (aspenwayenterprises.com), aka http://www.aarons.com/storelocator.aspx http://www.aarons.com/storelocator.aspx . It was childish and not very nice. "Please delete this email address from your address book and add the following: jesseferagen@qwestoffice.net If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me at 406-294-9432. Thank you, Jesse Feragen" The owner of Aspen Way goes by the name Rohnn Lampi http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rohnn-lampi/8/779/a6 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rohnn-lampi/8/779/a6

mariuolo 14y ago

Anyone else caught doing this would be facing felony charges. But I suppose business is held to other standards.

Zenst 14y ago

So users who rent computers have sex! I must look into this. But this whole issue of spyware on rental/lease/borrowed computers keeps on cropping up time and time again and yet it is still legal to have spayware installed in the first place, its how its used. As for tracking the users location, site usage etc, don't mobile phone companies already do that by definition of how they work! Mobile phones are computers after all and with that in mind this whole area of privacy and expectations of privacy needs to be cleared up as it is a mindfeild for everybody in many ways.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

belorn 14y ago

Society really need to stop treating illegal activities different just because it's an company and not an individual who performed them. If an individual, say the boyfriend of someone lent his computer to his girlfriend with those programs, he would be prosecuted in almost every modern country in the world. If he would use that information for monetary gain (like selling the pictures), he would likely end up in jail. If an individual would apply the exact same program on an open proxy or on usb-keys dropped at a parking lot, he would be prosecuted under hacking laws and likely end up in jail for several years, especially if he earned money from it. I guess the problem crackers and blackhats have with the law today is that they aren't companies. They should really form a company front for their activities, and hide any stealing of private information as "data mining for advertising" which they just happen to sell at highest price in auctions to "email-advertising" companies in China/Russia/Nigeria. Any images could be sold too, like to magazines/porn studios as any user "uploaded" files are company property as by the EULA. If they ever get caught, they can just say "oops, sorry", close down, create a new a new company, and go on with business as usual.

jerf 14y ago
mens rea is probably missing. It's pretty clear at this point that a number of people get the bright idea of turning on the webcam to some degree on the laptops they still own while sending them home with other people. While it's always skeevy, it's worth pointing out that it probably isn't malicious. It's actually a simple manifestation of a standard form of human irrationality, the availability heuristic [1]. The people making these decisions sit there and fear what may be done to their property, and while they are sitting there imagining all the things that may be done, that ends up swamping all the other possibilities in their head. They imagine they're just going to catch two sorts of images: People normally using the laptop, and people stealing or hurting it. (And I am sure that if you asked them to guess how many images of abuse they'd catch that they would overestimate by at least two orders of magnitude.) The availability heuristic has crowded out all the other sorts of images they will capture in what is very nearly a random sampling of the full range of home life. So the people end up as surprised as can be that they end up with what is legally child porn on their hands. I really don't think that these companies are setting out to collect that on purpose. They're just taking doing something skeevy, but seemingly safe, under the guidance of a normal human irrationality we all have, and end up bitten by it. Even if they do in fact have somewhat malicious purposes and want to catch some sort of other image they shouldn't want, they will still end up over-imagining how much of that they will catch, and not realize how much other stuff they will catch. Your examples are not comparable, in that they all include clear intent. And if you are really inclined to argue "But they should have known!"... well... are you so sure you're completely conversant in all possible legal issues arising in fields completely outside of your experience? I'd certainly like word to get out this is a very bad idea, but I'm not sure I'm willing to destroy lives over this mistake. That's not a standard I want to live under! It's really damned easy to tell other people they shouldn't suffer from standard human irrationalities. It's much harder to see them in yourself when they happen. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

delinka 14y ago

Watching people surreptitiously in the privacy of their homes, definitely in the wrong. Tracking the computers' whereabouts- I don't see why this couldn't have just been made known, e.g. "We'll be tracking the location of the machine so that when you fail to pay, we can recover our property." Disabling the computer when renters get behind- where is the problem here? If you don't make your mortgage or rent payments, you don't get to stay for free. There are automobile finance companies for a similar demographic that will disable the car when payment isn't made. It's not like the car stops working when you're a day late. The computer warns the driver long before disabling the car. Kinda makes sense to give your 'customer' a warning and maintain her ability to drive to you to make payments. And what's this "force a fake popup"? What's a fake popup versus a real one? Perhaps the store's systems should know who has rented which machines. But I suspect this is more about tracking the computer's location for recovery when payments are behind. So here's my take: invasion of privacy is a big problem and should be prosecuted. Disabling service and recovering property that hasn't been paid for just makes sense. Certainly this particular company could have been more scrupulous about locating their property when payments were not made.

pc86 14y ago
Ignoring all the screen capture and webcam nonsense and focuses strictly on the location tracking: should it be expected for a company that will by its definition attract deadbeats and scammers be required to detail its security measures?

deleted 14y ago

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deleted 14y ago

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