etee's Blog

It appears that not only children need worry about bad people stalking them on the popular social networking site MySpace. Diana DeGarmo, runner-up for Season 3 of American Idol, reports that she was the victim of an Internet-based stalker who stole her identity, then blackmailed her.

She appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" (where I first spotted this), and detailed how this woman posed as a teenage fan, then managed to hack into her computer via MySpace (my guess is that she planted a piece of malware on Diana's MySpace page which installed spyware or a rootkit on her PC next time she visited), then basically started doing stuff as her. Calling people, soliciting sex and drugs, trying to buy stuff, answering emails... way scary. Finally cornered, the woman (who was neither a teenager nor from Minnesota, as she claimed) admitted that her purpose was... blackmail. Yes, this 'woman' had discovered yet another way to Make $$$$MONEY$$$$$ FAST! on the Internet!

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending -- happy, that is, for all but the scammer. Ms. DeGarmo contacted the FBI, who worked with the authorities in Australia (where the stalker was residing), and the MMFool from Down Under was taken into custody and has been charged.

Lesson learned: don't leave your PC on all night - or if you do, have adequate protective mechanisms (current anti-virus, firewall with both ingress and egress filtering rules, maybe even an IPS at the router if you are savvy enough), and don't assume people online are who they say they are!

It will save you a lotta grief in the long run.