These companies do this by activating pre-installed software once your computer is reported stolen – software that can track the location of your laptop through GPS, access the thief’s IP address, and even monitor the thief’s activity. The latter means tracking keystrokes, messages, emails, and even real-time communications happening via webcam.

An Ohio woman has been given the go-ahead to sue one of these laptop-tracking companies after they captured sexually explicit images from a live communication between her and her boyfriend.

Absolute Software, whose products LoJack for Laptops helps to recover stolen computers, is on the bad end of this decision.

Here’s the story of how a long-term substitute teacher’s sex pics were captured by Absolute and eventually used by law enforcement officers:

The Clark County Ohio school district purchased a bunch of laptops for school use years ago. One of those laptops was issued to a vocational student and in 2008, it was stolen from a public library. The vocational student reported the theft to the Police.

That stolen laptop was eventually purchased by a 9th grader at an alternative school within the Clark County School District. He purchased it for $40 at a bus station and subsequently sold it to long-term sub Susan Clements-Jeffrey for $60. He apparently made up a story about not needing the computer, which was a gift from his aunt and uncle.

The laptop in question was busted up and had been wiped of some software but another teacher at the school repaired it for Clements-Jeffrey.

Little did Clements-Jeffrey know, but when the school district purchased the laptops, thy entered a security contract with Absolute Software. Back in April 2008, when the vocational student reported the laptop in question stolen to police, Absolute was contacted and the “tracking alarm” was triggered. “The stolen laptop was directed to report its IP address to Absolute the next time the laptop was connected to the internet,” says the court documents.

Absolute also prompted the laptop to download a bunch of software that would allow them to intercept communications and monitor activity in real time.

And in June 2008, a Absolute “theft recovery officer” used this ability to monitor webcam communications between Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend. During that 30-second monitoring period, the tech took three screencaps of the live video.

In these pictures, Clements-Jeffrey is naked and in one she is spreading her legs.

After all this information was reported to the police, they brought her in for questioning. According to Clements-Jeffrey, the officers showed her the explicit images obtained by Absolute and laughed at her, mocked her and told her she should have known better than to do this stuff on the web.

The charges for having the stolen property were later dropped, as Clements-Jeffrey denied having seen the scratched-off serial number and claiming that $60 for the 2-year-old laptop didn’t raise any red flags. She remains steadfast that she didn’t know the laptop was stolen.

Now, she is suing Absolute software for the ordeal. She claims that her fourth amendment rights against illegal search and seizure were violated and that Absolute violated her privacy based on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communication Act.

Absolute hit back that Clements-Jeffrey had no expectation of privacy, as the laptop was stolen. From Wired –

The defendants moved for summary judgment on grounds that courts have ruled in the past that there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in cases involving known stolen property. They asserted that Clements-Jeffrey should have known the laptop was stolen based in part on the $60 price the seller was asking for it and on the fact that the serial number had been scraped off the bottom of the machine.

Absolute also insisted it was acting on behalf of its customer, the school district, and therefore was covered under “color of law” and “safe harbor” statutes. The company cited its agreement with the school district, which gives Absolute’s staff “the ability to view and recover any files that are present” on the school’s computers.

The Judge has ruled, however, that “a reasonable jury could find that they crossed an impermissible boundary.” The suit can move forward.

In June, we told you about another computer-recovery company called Hidden that got their name in the news by finding a man’s MacBook. The victim set up a blog where he posted images that the Hidden app was taking of the thief in real-time.

This ruling is a big decision when it comes to how far these companies can go to retrieve stolen property. Should IP addresses and GPS be enough? Should they have the right to monitor sensitive communications from suspected thieves?

You can read the full court decision here.

The more often participants engaged in sexual activity online the higher their level of depression and anxiety were. Thirty percent had high levels of anxiety and 35 percent were moderately to severely stressed.

"But there’s also a chance that depressed people are spending time on these sites to help lift their mood or reduce stress,” said Squirrell.

Certainly, correlation doesn’t always (if ever) imply causation, and the jury is still out as to whether sad men are more likely to seek sexual gratification, or if lack of actual physical contact produces temporary euphoria followed by depression because of amplified absence.

TechRadar reports “BitchBuzz” founder and self-described sex expert Cate Sevilla (public LinkedIn profile doesn’t indicate academic background, though) rejects the implications of the study. “I think that there are a lot of men out there that look at and watch porn online that are perfectly healthy – it’s just a part of their sexuality,” she said, though the study didn’t seem to refute that assessment to begin with. Sevilla suggests obsession among some is the real problem.

Another recent study suggested cybersex, on a stress-relief level, or even masturbation, were no substitutes for good old fashioned coitus—those magic endorphins just aren’t released by simulation. It’s likely necessary for survival that reproductive sex is more rewarding emotionally.

Something else simulated or cybersex lacks, which deserves more study as to the effect on depression and anxiety, is the release of oxytocin, a hormone released during labor, but also is generated by physical touch as a bonding chemical between mothers and infants during breastfeeding, and also between lovers. 

Freudian psychoanalysts could have a field-day with those implications—lack of intimacy driving mama’s boys online in pursuit of unfulfilling digital relationships—but let’s not mine the depths of the spooky subconscious today, thank you. But it’s at least plausible that the bonding experience induced by real sex is not accessible in cyberspace—hence all the depression. 
 
 

We don’t allow nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. This includes making sexual advances toward other users. We also don’t allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography sites …

However, a typical room overview listing at Lively.com lately revealed many adult-oriented rooms, often ranking in high positions. Titles and descriptions may read “sexy meetings here” or “cyber sex,” and the rooms may contain display of semi-saucy YouTube videos.

Wikipedia explains “Cybersex … is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more persons connected remotely via a computer network send one another sexually explicit messages describing a sexual experience. It is a form of role-playing in which the participants pretend they are having actual sexual relations.” Added to that, some of these rooms may partly also just be means to promote adult sites, I’m not too sure.

Right now, even when a public room listing is a useful way to explore, the sub-communities may also be much too fragmented in their needs for overlaps not to hurt… and it could also be a temptation for spammers to have their content listed so visibly on a Google service homepage. Whatever the case, Google seems to think of it as something worth addressing and posted the following in the Lively help group:

We’ve received complaints about recently created “sex rooms” in Lively, and we take these complaints seriously. When browsing or searching for rooms, some Livley citizens come upon these rooms as the top results, which can erode their Lively experience.

Lively is intended to be a place for Lively citizens to connect with each other and express themselves freely and in a safe environment. Our community standards prohibit sexually explicit images and rooms intended for sexual activity, even if virtual. When we become aware of “sex rooms” that violate or Terms of Service, we’ll work to remove them. We may also disable the violator’s Google Account and Lively access.

If you come across rooms with sexually explicit content or that are intended to engage in or solicit sexual activity, you can find out how to report a user or room at the Lively Help Center …

Google’s help pages point out that objects, avatars and rooms can be abuse-reported by clicking a button – to do so, you need to log-in to the room first, though. But note Google’s language; whether intentionally or not, they say they remove sex rooms which violate their terms of services… perhaps implying there may be sex rooms which don’t violate their terms. Indeed, a room like “Sexy & Hot” was created on July 10th – with over 8,000 visitors so far – and remains unremoved. It might be possible these remaining rooms don’t fit Google’s “explicit” criteria from the ToS. Google in their help entry explains:

When you click Report Abuse, we automatically receive a notification. If based on the report we discover that the content violates real world laws or our policies, we may immediately remove it and report any necessary information to the appropriate authorities.

If you continue to see the content a few days after you flagged it, it’s likely that it was reviewed and did not violate our policies.

With this in mind, perhaps a mere safe search filter for the frontpage room listings may be more along what Google deems pragmatic. (Lively’s terms already require you to be 13 years or older to use the service, by the way.) Then if you want adult rooms and you disabled the safe search setting in your main Google search options, you’d get those but it wouldn’t be noise. Imagine the reverse: a Big Brother-ish world where two adults talking about adult topics would risk being banned – with potentially serious real-world implications, as this may include locking you out of your Google Account… which in turn includes Gmail emails, Google Docs documents and so on. A free virtual world seems more likable.

Consequently, when you do want to report a room for abuse, Google’s dialog first disclaims that “Lively is a place for many different people to express themselves, and you may read or see things you don’t agree with … Remember, you can always ignore users you don’t like or leave rooms you don’t feel comfortable in.”

On another note, Google now disabled adding custom graphics into objects like photo frames… and they disabled this for everyone, not just creators of adult-oriented places. I don’t know if this is related to the current “saucy rooms” issue, but it may be. Instead of your favorite picture, your photo frame may now just show black… and you won’t be able to edit or access its photo URL anymore. Imagine the surprise of a happy home owner busy decorating their walls. Google in the help group posts:

We ran into a snag with the photo gadget, and have currently removed it for maintenance. Hopefully it’ll be back up soon.

Thanks for your patience while we work on a fix.

Then again, it’s also possible Google disabled this due to a bug with photo frames that didn’t make pics you loaded into it automatically adjust to the object’s size… rather, the pics mostly ended up distorted and misplaced.

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