Earlier this Friday, two men were arrested and charged for multiple fraud cases for developing and selling a software that allows people to hack passwords of the famous photo and video hosting site, Photobucket. This invaded a lot of user’s privacy and violated privacy rights causing the Department of Justice to take action.
Photobucket was founded in 2003 and stated to have total of 100 million registered users throughout the world. The site allows users to store their photos and videos privately and publicly. It is known to have many dedicated users and gets around 60 million unique visitors per day.
The two accusers, Brandon Bourret of Colorado age 39 and Athanasios Andrianakis of Californias age 26, developed the software together that lets them hack Photobucket’s user accounts. The software by-passes Photobucket’s privacy settings to gain access to registered user’s information and password.
Now both, Brandon Bourret and Athanasios Andrianakis are charged with computer fraud and abuse, access device fraud, identification document fraud and wire fraud. Access device fraud carries the longest penalty, up to five years in prison, and $250,000 in fine per count.
Both intended to make money by selling the passwords and unauthorized access to private and password-protected information, images and videos. There is also evidence of them selling their developed software as well. They have done this from July 12th 2012 to July 2014.
The police placed them both under arrest after finding evidence of their email conversions, PayPal transactions and also messages they shared with clients during customer support.
US Attorney John Walsh of Colorado stated “It is not safe to hide behind your computer, breach corporate servers and line your own pockets by victimizing those who have a right to protected privacy on the Internet,”
