I present to Leah Palmer. It is an attractive British girl, single, twenties, who currently lives in Dubai.
It has a very active presence on social networks and often chat with family and friends on sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter .
If you’re male, you might have noticed Leah in the app dating Tinder looking for romance
Ignore the man in the picture:. is his annoying ex-boyfriend <. /> p>
Actually, Leah Palmer does not exist.
The woman in the picture is Ruth Palmer and is happily married to Benjamin Graves, yes, the man in the picture.
In the fake account, Ruth’s husband is portrayed as “psychotic ex-boyfriend.”
Ruth recently discovered that over the past three years someone has been stealing his photographs, his family and friends in social networks and putting together a network of fake profiles to 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.
They thought they were connecting with Ruth, the wife of the image.
While the authentic Palmer has 140 followers on Instagram, Leah has more than 800 and all your pictures (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.
” He sent me a photo where I appeared with some friends from college four years ago, but it was a screenshot of the 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, there were pictures of my friends ” .
The images came from a mix of social networks of 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 accompanied by her husband.
Immediately they realized what had happened, account Ruth, because 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.”
“One had broken with a real girlfriend to have an online relationship 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.
Ruth Leah tried to call 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 about a week the numbers were no longer in use. “
Detective work
The real Palmer contacted the social networking companies 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 any 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 public profile pages. 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 maybe I had a very brief open profile “.
But the obvious and uncomfortable idea is that” Leah “may be someone who knows.
” They have created profiles of 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 social networks? There must be something, if only support or a change in the laws, “he says.
Hook
For security expert Alan Woodward, the University of Surrey, is a classic case of online hook.
“To be fair to the police, what can they do?”.
“If someone is misusing an image, what can you do? There are millions of images uploaded to the Internet every day. “
” I think there must be some related crime (in this case), what if not why anyone would bother? “Says Woodward.
“I personally believe that you should not put anything in the networks would not want to see published in a local newspaper,” he says.
“Privacy settings change, the search conditions change … Only Needless images are available for a couple of minutes to copy on the computer of another person “.
The expert lawyer in copyright Adam Rendle said the only recourse Ruth Palmer could be through photographs that caused the problem in the first place.
“The impostor or imposter not have the rights of photos and videos of the victim, the person who took those pictures probably yes”.
“The victim could therefore use the copyright to prevent the impostor using that material.”
“The platforms generally respond to requests for withdrawal (of material) based on copyright “says Rendle.
How common is identity theft?
The practice of using photos of another person when looking couple online quite true, according to security expert Graham Cluley on the web.
“A lot of people have trouble social networks take measures”.
Generally those affected do not know that your photos are being used elsewhere unless discovered by chance, Cluley said.
“There seekers photos as Tineye.com where you can upload an image and see where it appears on the network.”
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