Ominous trolling ruins real lives
As Fusion newspaper wrote in October 2015, the destruction of the Straters family life started with pizza. Several years ago all local cafes and restaurants overwhelmed their yard with unbidden pizza, pies and other food of all kinds. Paul and Amy Strater had to apologize and decline the order.
Soon after bouquets arrived, accompanied with large quantities of sand and gravel, tow trucks and other unwanted goods and services. These turned to be only the tip of the iceberg as the next three years were a real nightmare.
Paul Strater, a senior broadcast engineer at a local TV station, and his wife Amy Strater, a former hospital administrator, were victims of an unknown hacker or a group of hackers who did not get along with their son Blair. Authorities received bomb threats signed with their name. Hackers used Amy’s account to publish an elementary school attack plan. The covering note included the “I Will Shoot Up Your School” headline. Police became frequent guest at their house, which did not improve their relationships with neighbors who had to wonder what the heck was going on.
Criminals even managed to hack Tesla Motors official account and posted a message, which encouraged fans to call the Straters and receive a free Tesla car. That was the “on the phone weekend” for Straters, as Amy and Blair received up to five calls per minute from Tesla admirers, who wanted to acquire a car on “promo.” One man even visited the Straters’ house and and demanded that the owners open their garage door, as he suspected that his free Tesla was being hidden back there.
Paul tried to disrupt a siege: he changed passwords for all of his accounts and instructed managers of local restaurants not to deliver anything to their address unless it was prepaid in full. He also reached Oswego Police Department and asked them to call ahead to verify that an emergency was real, before sending in reinforcements. Somewhere in the course of all these troubles Paul’s and Amy’s marriage broke up.
Attacks did not stop. Amy’s social media accounts were hacked and used to publish a series of racist claims. Soon after that she lost her job. She was fired despite she had proactively told her bosses that somebody is continuously turning her and her family life into nightmare.
In time Amy regained control over her LinkedIn, and managed to delete her Twitter account. But for some time Amy could not find a job in her profession because of this background. She had to work at Uber to make ends meet, but that was not enough and she was at risk of losing her home.
“When you Google her name, you used to see all of her scholarly articles, and the good things she’s done” said her son Blair to the Fusion. “Now it’s: hacker, hacker, hacker.”
Some people blame Blair Strater, who was in various cybercriminals circles and did not find friends in one, or several of them. Anyhow, in the case of Straters family parents pay for their son’s “sins,” as they had nothing to do with those hackers at all.
OK, is there any way to safety?
These stories show that it’s almost impossible to protect yourself from targeted hacking. So if you have something that you want to hide, don’t let it go online. Fortunately, the majority of people are not interested for the qualified culprits. You and I need protection from those cybercriminals who aim at wide public. There are a lot of such “specialists” on the Internet, and fortunately, they use more simple methods.
So we recommend you the following:
• Get to know why phishing works and how to avoid it.
• Set up secure and unique passwords for all accounts.
• Read how to use Internet safely.
• Stop using public Wi-Fi for important operations and find out what’s right and wrong to do online with finances.
• Install a decent security solution to all your devices. Yep, your smartphone and tablet also need protection. Of course, we can’t but recommend our award-winning solution — Kaspersky Internet Security — Multi Device.
