a friend of mine is being accused of writing innapropiat and offesive materials via emails and msn chat to an underage minor.he says that he is innocent of this and i believe him.My question is since a reciever of an email can copy the email or the chat session onto there computer and subject that email or chat to manipulation ie. create multiple copies and rewrite them,is there any way that this can be proved.Meaning can you identifie the sender even on a copied email or chat?Can you find out there ip adress from copies or can you manipulate the adress in any way once the document is copied? Also can you manipule the original email or chat with or without detection ? I you can answer these questions or point me to links that can i would be greatful thx
Recommended Answers
Jump to PostMore likely someone send the offensive messages using a fake address which happens to match your friend.
Another possibility is that his machine has been compromised and someone used it to send the offending material. In that case he'll have a hard time proving it wasn't him and may have …
Jump to Posthmm, the one could definitely be considered an indecent proposal, especially in the US where taking pictures of your own babies in the bath is considered child pornography.
The other, I don't know. Would likely depend a lot on the context.
Jump to PostI somehow doubt it's the girl.
More likely their parents have heard that there's good money in such things by threatening to file a complaint of attempted child mollestation unless they're paid a goodly amount and are making the whole thing up. Unless your friend is indeed a dirty old …
All 12 Replies
More likely someone send the offensive messages using a fake address which happens to match your friend.
Another possibility is that his machine has been compromised and someone used it to send the offending material. In that case he'll have a hard time proving it wasn't him and may have to depend on character witnesses.
Happens a lot these days. Most people by now know that most spam, scams, trojans, virusses and other nasties use fake addresses and falsified message headers to hide the true origin.
Does your friend have a lot of money? Or does someone hold a grudge against him? If so it might be he's been set up but most likely it's random.
An expert should be able to determine from the message headers whethere they are faked or not and trace them as far as possible. That could well clear your friend. If not as I said he's in for a tough fight.
More likely someone send the offensive messages using a fake address which happens to match your friend.
Another possibility is that his machine has been compromised and someone used it to send the offending material. In that case he'll have a hard time proving it wasn't him and may have to depend on character witnesses.Happens a lot these days. Most people by now know that most spam, scams, trojans, virusses and other nasties use fake addresses and falsified message headers to hide the true origin.
Does your friend have a lot of money? Or does someone hold a grudge against him? If so it might be he's been set up but most likely it's random.
An expert should be able to determine from the message headers whethere they are faked or not and trace them as far as possible. That could well clear your friend. If not as I said he's in for a tough fight.
i should have mentioned that he had sent the girl 2 emails one allowing her to spend the night and one asking her about songs for a cd
hmm, the one could definitely be considered an indecent proposal, especially in the US where taking pictures of your own babies in the bath is considered child pornography.
The other, I don't know. Would likely depend a lot on the context.
i talked to my friend and he said that him and his wife were allowing the girl who is there daughters friend to spend the night he also said that they are saying that they got 200 emails from him my thoughts are that the girl duplicated the emails and then changed them to say whatever she wanted them too.If this is the case ! how can it be proven and 2 wouldnt these emails all have the same address?
Another question i have is what could he do to prove the girl did it?
A confession from the girl would be the obvious way to prove she did it, althought I doubt that getting that would be as easy as asking for it. Also, the emails could come from different email addresses. There are many different free email hosts on the internet (google, yahoo, hotmail, etc.), and even some ISPs allow a user to have multiple email accounts with them.
I would suggest comparing the grammatical structure of the emails the girl recieved with that of your friend. See if they contain similar grammatical mistakes, mispellings, word usage, etc., and also compare them with that of the girl to see if they are similar to her's. This might help prove that he did not send them.
Could it be possible that your friend did send them though, but that he was under the influence that the girl was not a minor? Could she have told him it was okay to send them and said that she was legal? It's very easy for someone to lie about their age online. Also, you might check with the email service provider(s) and ISPs and see if you or they can check the logs for any of those emails and the IP addresses that sent/recieved them. IF your friend and the girl both have static IP addies, then this could help, as the IPs shouldn't have changed since the incident. But if they have dynamic IPs you might have a bit more trouble, since the IPs change each time you connect to the internet. If you are not sure if their IPs are static or dynamic, just remember that broadband has a static IP and dial-up has a dynamic IP. One last suggestion, from now on your friend should keep logs of internet chatting and drafts of emails sent or recieved, to help cover his ankles. He could download and install a keylogger as well to help with this. It will record every keystroke made on that computer into a text log.
Anyways, good luck.
I somehow doubt it's the girl.
More likely their parents have heard that there's good money in such things by threatening to file a complaint of attempted child mollestation unless they're paid a goodly amount and are making the whole thing up. Unless your friend is indeed a dirty old man and you don't know about it of course...
Just because his wife is also involved doesn't make it any more valid. Tastes run to the weirdest things I'm afraid.
I'd say getting a good lawyer is the first thing to do. At worst he might be able to get a lesser sentence, at best a good countersuit for libel and extortion.
your info is interesting one other question i have is this. they got all the emails from the girls computer and not my friends there are no records of these emails on my friends computer so wouldnt this show that my friend didnt right them ? Aloso my friend connects through cable and not a dial up and the girl connects from dial up does this make a difference?
another question i have (you guys are great)is there any way to tell whether or not there is a record of when the emails were sent,not when the person was logged on but when they were sent.
another question i have (you guys are great)is there any way to tell whether or not there is a record of when the emails were sent,not when the person was logged on but when they were sent.
If this goes to court, there are logs that can be subpoenaed. You can contact your friend's ISP, and they can give you a record of all of the emails actually sent from your friend with an address of To: that girl. That way, you can show which emails actually came from their machine to the girl.
Of course, that's a non-issue if someone has compromised your ISP account. If you don't suspect that, you should be good to go. Additionally, if you can request copies of those emails she's accusing you of sending with the full headers, that would be great. Those headers show the path those emails took, the IP addresses of parties involved, and can lead to who actually sent them.
These things can be somewhat easy to prove, because there is a trail left by emails when they're sent. You just have to connect the dots, really.
Well I Talked To My Friend And He Told Me That His Comp Is Connected Derectly To The Internet All The Time He Also Told Me That The Girl Has His Password So How Do You Find A Log If Its Constantly Connected As He Dosnt Have To Log On?
Something tells me that's someone else posting on the account.
Writing style is just too obviously different :)
The ISP will have a record of the emails sent by his account, unless it was long ago (not sure how long they're required by law to keep those records).
ya, jwenting, i see it to. Went from all lower case letters to the first letter of every letter being capitalized. lol. took me a sec. interesting though
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.