I have a friend who has a computer that keeps getting hacked by her crazy Ex boyfriend. He had all kinda of back doors, hooks and keyloggers on there to get all of her passwords. She thought she found all of them, but apparently not now she is reformatting and changing her passwords (again).
It began with him finding out her password to an online game she plays and deleting all of her items there. Now it has come down to him hacking into her computer and deleting her My Documents folder.
She has the IP address of the offending computer logged and the person who is doing it has admitted it to another person. My question is what type of legal action can be taken? Is this a federal crime? The hacking is taking place from out of state.
Take it to your local authorities. Give them the info. If they are correctly trained, they can supeona the originating ISP for the person and get the ball rolling on nailing him to the wall.
The guy will skate if charges are ever brought. There needs to be a system screen that pops up to logins stating that access to xyz computer is restricted to authorized guests and users blah blah blah, otherwise log off now.. etc etc etc
Bringing charges against him will incur costs to her anyway. Is it really worth it?
Grendel's correct. Hacking across state lines is a federal offense, so your friend should report it to both the local authorities and the Feds. I think the FBI handles those things. And I would suggest your friend get herself a new drive and set it up. Even though she deleted some of the things he did, I doubt she is knowledgable enough to have completely "wiped" that drive, so the material is still retrievable and the authorities will probably want to see it.
