She is Leah Palmer, a sexy British girl, single, twenties and currently lives in Dubai. Also, t iene a very active presence in the social networks and often chat with family and friends on sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
If you are male, you might have noticed in the app Leah dating Tinder looking for romance. Ignore the man in the picture: is your annoying ex-boyfriend
(Photo: Ruth Palmer).
However, it does not exist. The woman in the picture is Ruth Palmer and is happily married to Benjamin Graves, yes, the man in the picture.
Ruth recently discovered that over the past three years someone has been stealing his photographs, his family and friends in the social networks and arming a network of fake profiles that communicate with each other.
This person, who calls Leah Palmer, Ruth’s husband described as “psychotic ex” in its version of the photos and had online relationships with at least six different men.
While Ruth Palmer, authentic, has 140 followers on Instagram, “Leah” has over 800 and all your photos, over 900, are Ruth and his friends.
Rare and false
Ruth newly discovered his “virtual double” in January this year. “One day one of my old college friends texted me: ‘Have you seen this picture You know who he is?’” He told the BBC.
“I sent a picture where he appeared with some friends from college four years ago, but it was a screenshot Instagram account of another person”.
Ruth and her friend looked at the bill and saw that I had a lot of images. “Not only mine, also had pictures of my friends,” he says.
The images came from a mixture of social networks their own accounts and accounts of his friends. “It was all very strange and very false.”
When Ruth saw that Leah was contacting false men with these profiles, got talking to some of them via Skype, always with her husband.
Then they realized what had happened, tells Ruth, because the “Leah” with which they had spoken on the phone had a completely different accent.
“Some of these men had online sex with her, had exchanged explicit images … I can not even imagine,” Ruth says.
“One had broken with a real girlfriend to have a relationship online with this girl who thought it was me. “
A man told him that he had found” Leah “in Tinder. “I do not even know what it was Tinder” says Ruth.
She tried to call “Leah” the phone number he had given her to appointments.
“I had two phones. The first sounded, attended only got to say ‘hi’ and she hung up in less than two seconds.” After two weeks, the numbers were no longer in use.
Detective work
The Palmer true contacted the companies social networks who told him that Leah was quick to remove fake profiles, but soon proliferated again.
The police offered him support, but as he had not committed no crime and the person did not use the full name of Ruth, little can do.
Ruth says he always kept his accounts with maximum privacy settings. “I have no pages or public profiles. Never had because I am aware that there are people who can do this kind of thing.”
“I tried to make my own detective work and all I can think is that maybe when I opened my account in Instagram perhaps had an open profile very briefly. “
But the obvious and uncomfortable idea is that” Leah “may be someone who knows.
“They have created profiles for my mom, my friends … and all these fake accounts have conversations with each other”.
Ruth decided to spread their experience to draw attention to such cases.
“What can you do if something goes wrong in the social networks ? There must be something, if only support or a change in the laws,” he says.
Hook
For security expert Alan Woodward, University of Surrey (England), is a classic case of online hook.
“To be fair to the police, what can they do?” said Woodward. “If someone is misusing a picture, what can you do? There are millions of images uploaded to the Internet every day (…) I think there must be some related (in this case) crime, would if not why anyone would bother? “he said.
Adam Rendle, expert lawyer Copyright , said the only recourse Ruth Palmer could be through photographs that caused the problem in the first place.
“The impostor or impostor not have the rights to the photos and videos of the victim, the person who took those pictures probably yes, “he says. “The victim could therefore use the copyright to prevent the impostor use this material (…) ” The platforms generally respond to requests for withdrawal (of material) based on copyright “he adds.
How common is identity theft?
The practice of using someone else’s photos when online dating was looking pretty occurs, according to security expert Graham Cluley on the web.
Generally those affected are unaware that their photos are being used elsewhere unless discover for chance, Cluley said.
“There seekers photos as Tineye.com where you can upload an image and see where it appears on the network,” said the specialist.
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