(Online Dating Industry Journal) A Suffolk County cop faces 28 felony charges for cyberstalking a woman he met on Match.com, figuring out her email password, reactivating her Match.com account, and reading and sending messages to men in her name for dates. Two of the men even showed up at her home expecting a date.
Angry that the woman he met through Match.com and dated for about 6 weeks broke up with him, Michael Valentine posed as the woman online to presumably get back at her. He assumed her identity online and communicated with 70 different men. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times:
Suffolk County Dist. Atty. Thomas Spota brought the indictment against Michael Valentine, 28, of Lake Grove, N.Y. It charged him with stalking, computer tampering and aggravated harassment, among other crimes.
"This is cyber-terrorism," said Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, adding that the woman told investigators she feared for her life. "The men and women of the department are being shamed today."
Maida Goodman, a spokesperson for Match.com, told the LA Times that the company would cooperate with the investigation.
That’s really embarrassing. Imagine you have registered at the site and then someone is communicating with hundreds of people on your behalf!
Sandor Veigh in his research on “Media’s portrayal on hacking, hackers and hacktivism” at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_2/vegh/index.html says that “There is a larger focus on cyberterrorism now, even if it has not yet happened.”
He also determines that “since no real cyberterrorist attacks have yet occurred, it is safe to say that the main issue here is the possibility of a future cyberattack by terrorists, a topic that gives ample opportunity for manipulating public opinion and influence policy makers in directions that the apparent threat may not even justify.”
In this point of view this type of actions could be called cyberterrorism. And may be this one of the first live examples of cyberterrorism in Dating Business. Who knows :) We’ll see...
Posted by: Julia Dorofeeva | April 07, 2006 at 02:46 AM
Why are people so "shocked" when cops do this stuff? I knew a deputy sheriff who drove his cruiser drunk several times and even got pulled over and got a "courtesy ride home" from another officer on a couple of ocassions. He was also a member of match, and several adult porn dating sites while he was living with one lady and dating at least two others. Scum of the earth. Some of the cops only want the job for the power and to use it as a bargaining chip in their quest for fetishes and sexual conquests. Quite frankly, they are about as corrupt as politicians!
Posted by: Lisa | September 30, 2009 at 08:42 PM