PNN EXCLUSIVE
Contents of iPhone is stolen and you won’t believe what was done with it!

Once publicly posted on the Internet; an Internet group begins days and days of harassment.

(This group is so vicious that our source has requested protection of his identity)

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THIS POST CONTAINS IMAGES WHICH CONTAIN EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND SUGGESTIVE IMAGES
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We live in an increasingly technology centered world, and it’s become standard for people to store large volumes of personal data on their computers and cellphones. All it takes is one mistake, however, and all of this data can be made public.

On Wednesday July 8^th, 2015, a posting on an anonymous message board shared a personal victory with his cohorts: he had stolen 22 gigabytes of personal data from a stranger on a bus. His method was not advanced or high-tech; the stranger had merely requested to use the thief’s laptop USB port to charge his dying iPhone. The thief, seeing an opportunity, agreed. The moment the iPhone was plugged in, he went about downloading its contents onto his own hard drive. For the purposes of this article we will be censoring all of the sensitive information/imagery. We have no desire to harm the victim of this crime, nor do we wish to bring them more unwanted attention, but we do hope the reporting of this incident can help save others.

What was in that 22 gigabytes of data? The victim’s full name, nude images of his girlfriend, scans of his driver’s license, and an image of his Social Security card, with the number in clear view. All of it was shared with thousands of strangers on the internet. It was then that things went from bad to worse, as people on the website began to come up with unique and horrifying ways to use the information.

Some people only cared about getting more information about their victims, so they went to work hunting down addresses, phone numbers, and social media accounts. They texted, called, and emailed not only the man who had his data stolen, but also his girlfriend. In fact, the users were far more interested in her than in the man. They first attempted to break them up in a twisted bid to win her love, and they next sent her nude images to as many of the victims’ friends and family members as possible.

This went on for days. More than a dozen threads were made about the young couple. The organized harassment campaign became worse. People began to send them everything from pizzas, to free samples, to army recruiters, and even SWAT teams lead to falsely believe there was a threat. The man’s band was contacted and harassed.

Thankfully, some users were unable to allow the cruelty to go unchecked, and they reached out to the no-doubt confused victims to explain how these strangers had gotten their info and what exactly they had. This angered the more sadistic users, but it helped to slow down most of the damage.

That considered, users are still continuing to post images of the man’s girlfriend, both clothed and unclothed, with highly disturbing messages, and several going so far as to send her these messages over Facebook and Pinterest. Some say that they wish her to be their wife, while others just want her to break up with her boyfriend, whom they believe to be unworthy. There are also far more colorful messages of lust or delusions of love, but we’ve chosen to show only milder examples.

All of what we know about has taken place on a message board site called 8Chan which contains the following warning on their home page: “Some boards on this site might contain content of an adult or offensive nature. Please cease use of this site if it is illegal for you to view such content. The boards on this site are made entirely by the users and do not represent the opinions of the administration of 8chan. In the interest of free speech, only content that directly violates the DMCA or other US laws is deleted.”

Threads regarding the couples information have been deleted, but then users would just start a new thread and repost. Large portions of their private information have been posted and removed nearly a dozen times. As it stands now, it seems the users have (for the most part) moved on from their targeted harassment campaign, as the comedy value has dropped for them. All the same, what was a few days of entertainment for some, is surely a persisting nightmare for the victims, as they must now go through the process of protecting themselves from various forms of fraud and straggling harassers.

If any good can come of this, it might be that this serves as a dire warning to those who are too trusting, and to those who are careless with their technology. If you have sensitive information stored on a digital device then you must make absolutely sure that it is secure. In a perfect world, such self-protection would be unnecessary, but as evidenced here, we certainly do not live in a perfect world.