Stalker terrorizes family via cell phone?
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A cell phone stalker? Gimme a break, writes columnist Mike Elgan.
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A Washington state teenager is facing 18 years in prison on charges that he used his PC to access Orange County, Calif.&#39;s 911 emergency response system and convinced the sheriff&#39;s department into storming an area couple&#39;s home with a heavily armed SWAT team.Randall Ellis, 19, of Mulkiteo, Wash., is not only facing charges of unauthorized computer access, but he&#39;s also facing assault charges by proxy, meaning that authorities want Ellis to be convicted as if he, and not the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team, pointed weapons at the victims.The incident took place late in the evening of March 29, when Ellis allegedly used his computer to call the Orange County 911 dispatch and, during the course of a 38-minute telephone conversation, convinced dispatchers that he had murdered someone on the premises and was about to do it again.Within minutes, fire, police. and a helicopter team had been dispatched to the home of the Lake Forest, Calif., couple, whom authorities declined to identify.&quot;They surrounded the home, inside were a husband and wife and their two toddlers,&quot; said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman with the Orange County District Attorney&#39;s office. &quot;The husband heard rustling outside of his home and believed it to be a prowler. He took a knife and went into the backyard. Instead of finding a prowler, he found a SWAT team pointing assault rifles at him.&quot;&quot;It really easily could have escalated into an innocent person being killed,&quot; she added. &quot;We&#39;re lucky that they didn&#39;t shoot him.&quot;Emami characterized Ellis as a &quot;computer hacker,&quot; but declined to explain exactly how the attack was carried out. &quot;One of the reasons that we&#39;re not disclosing exactly how he did it is because we don&#39;t want to teach other computer hackers how to do it,&quot; she said.Still, it&#39;s not clear that Ellis&#39;s alleged hack involved anything more complicated than tricking the 911 system into thinking he was calling from the Lake Forest couple&#39;s number. County officials said Wednesday that he did not exploit a technical flaw in the 911 system&#39;s software.The technique that Ellis used &quot;doesn&#39;t require any special skills,&quot; said Jim Amormino, a spokesman with the Orange County Sheriff&#39;s Department. &quot;The way he did it: I am not computer savvy, but I can do it.&quot;The March 29 incident cost the county an estimated $18,000, Amormino said.Low-cost calling card services such as SpoofCard have been available for years, allowing customers to make it appear that their calls are coming from any number they wish.In June, four people were charged in Texas with operating a chat line where they taught people how to make false 911 calls, sending emergency response teams to targeted victims, a practice known as &quot;swatting.&quot; In a June 12 swatting incident, a swatter called up Cleburne, Texas&#39;s 911 dispatch using a commercially available spoof card and Skype, then &quot;stated that he had shot and killed members of the family, that he was holding hostages, that he was using hallucinogenic drugs, that he was armed with an AK-47, and he demanded $50,00 and transportation across the U.S. border to Mexico,&quot; according to court filings.Authorities said that Ellis had made nearly 200 fake 911 calls to dispatch systems in California, Arizona, Washington, and Pennsylvania.He is set to be arraigned Monday in Santa Ana, Calif.
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By CHISHOLM, Donna  SUSPICIOUS SPOUSES are going hi-tech to prove their partners' affairs - through records of deleted texts stored on mobile phones.
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Techniques designed to make suspects incriminate themselves through calls or texts
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"Snoopware" that listens, watches and spies through cell phones is on the rise. Columnist Mike Elgan sorts through the urban legends and bad information to explain what's possible and what can be done to protect yourself.
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Oh dear. Looks like so many people checked out the latest adult ringtones that the money people got scared. In Sex Drive Daily.
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Police investigating the woman accused of stalking Catherine Zeta-Jones found links to a telephone calling card used to make death threats against the Oscar-winning actress, a detective testified on Thursday.
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Scott Seigal was awakened one recent early morning by a cell phone text message. It was from his girlfriend's mother.
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CNET reporter confirms her family's home phone records accessed without her permission.
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About a month ago, writer James Buchan was worrying about his livestock and the intricacies of ghost stories, when the phone rang in his Norfolk, England, farmhouse.
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Looks like the time has come when mobile users would have to seriously consider getting some protection for their devices. Mobile viruses are coming out pretty regularly now and trend seems to be pointing towards a frantic future.
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Not since the introduction of the cell phone has the plain old home phone been in for such upheaval. The device long used for landline calling, recording voice mails, and storing phone lists may find itself replaced.
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By Byron Dubow  C    hristine Reus is a self-professed stalker -- a "Facebook stalker," that is.  "I meet new people, and that's the worst, because I've seen them on Facebook.
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On Monday evening, my wife reached me on my mobile phone. She was spending a long weekend with her family in Maine.
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Cell phones are becoming frequent targets for viruses, spam and other malicious attacks because most are not programmed with protective software.- The Washington Post
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A man accused of harassing Canadian pop singer Avril Lavigne's parents and violating a court order by trying to contact her has been charged with felony stalking.
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George A. Keyworth II and his family were victims of repeated attempts to use pretexting to gain their cellphone records.