I remember the times when peeping toms use binoculars or even climb up ladder and look through their victims windows in order to take a peek at their unknowing victims. It is a different story now that we are in the modern days and high-tech gadgets play a big role in our everyday life, some may even be used against unknowing victims.

I found a story about a certain peeping tom who installed a software on a womans laptop that allows him to use the camera on the machine and some photos of her and her friends (and sadly even her boyfriend..lol).

The story started when Marisel Garcia started to have laptop problems while visiting some of her friends in Gainesville, Florida last month. Her friends recommended her to a well known student at the University of Florida for his computer-fixing skills, the 23yr old Craig Matthew Feigin. She left the laptop with him overnight and went on her way, that is until several weeks later when she noticed some issues on her laptop. Garcia told the Gainesville Sun that her laptop’s light turned on every time she got near it—a light that many of us know signals that the built-in camera is in use.

Garcia then took the machine to another computer expert, who discovered that Feigin installed two softwares on her machine, Log Me In and his very own Web Cam Spy Hacker, a program that allowed him to upload the various photos taken on the machine to a remote server. Unfortunately for Garcia, that included 20,000 photos of her, her friends, and her boyfriend. Since the laptop mostly resided in her bedroom, some of them were taken while she was naked.

Feigin fessed up to the deeds and even admitted that Garcia’s laptop is not the only one where he installed the said software. “We have eight or nine more potential victims that we know of now,” Gainesville Police detective Joseph Mayo told the newspaper. Feigin was already arrested last week and was held in jail. He was charged with modifying computer data and disrupting or denying computer system services which, according to Florida Statute 815.06 on computer-related crimes, could be treated as a felony and punishable by prison time.

Although some computer users amy be able to know when there have been alterations to the programs installed on their unit, there are still some that still doesn’t know much about their computers, they are the potential victims of such an act. Let this story be a warning for all of you out there. Always keep an eye on your computers, specially your webcams, you wouldn’t know when someone is watching you, or even worse, taking pictures of you in your most intimate moments.