Dubai: If you'll have the option to secretly access your friend's webcam, will you apply for this service?
A website which offers "a unique spying" service had many girls fall prey to the nightmares of hacking.
What started as a service offer ended into a spiral of threats and demands from an online predator.
"It is not a highly sophisticated hacking method but the person used an immoral technique to sabotage the girls. He made sure to target specific girls and threatened to expose intimate and personal data about them," said Major Saed Al Hajiri, Director of the combating electronic crimes department at Dubai Police.
The police received many calls about this case but only a few lodged a formal complained, he said.
Around 20 Arab girls between 16 to 25 years old have so far been victimised by the 21-year-old predator.
The suspect reportedly knew how to manipulate the girls into believing he is capable of harming them if they did not heed his demands.
"He didn't have the ability to access anyone's computer or webcam," Al Hajiri said, adding that the Forensics were able to obtain the suspect's records and email account.
The webpage looks like an ordinary portal or a messenger service where users are required to punch in their email address and password and a friend's email.
The webpage is programmed to automatically send the unsuspecting user's email address and password to the predator's email account. With this technique the predator can take over the victim's email account.
"He even used their accounts to sabotage the victim's friends," said Al Hajiri.
The suspect would ask his victims to send him phone credits, but his primary aim was to collect pictures of his victims.
"He kept requesting for photos from his targets and personal information by threatening to extort and defame," he said. The suspect would even play tricks on the web to attract his targets to join the service.
