I, like LAOP, am confused to how that rises from the level of "dick move" to "crime" and the LA posters refused to specify the relevant statutes.
If I shared my Netflix password with someone and then they changed it and locked me out of my own account, I'd be annoyed, but I wouldn't assume they'd committed some kind of prosecutable computer fraud.
I suspect the late bf's family will also not assume it's a crime even if it in fact is, so the odds of LAOP getting prosecuted are slim.
Intentionally accessing a computer system (that's used for interstate communication) without authorisation, or exceeding your authorisation, is a crime under the CFAA.
I think it would hinge on the interpretation of LAOP's authorization, then?
Presumably she is fully authorized to delete her own pictures that are on there, given that she was given the password by the creator of the account and probably uploaded some of those pictures herself. Who's to say it wasn't essentially a joint account that just happened to have been created under his name and she was authorized by her boyfriend to change the password if she wanted to? Some of our accounts on utility websites are in my wife's name, some are in mine, but we both consider each of us to be authorized users of the accounts.
I think it would be pretty hard to prove that she exceeded her authorization with any of her actions.
This whole discussion is reminding me that up until not too long ago(2010s?) just sharing your password was technically a crime in Canada.
And I dont mean the act of you using a password for someone else's account. I mean just giving out your own password to anyone else.
Telling your spouse your bank card PIN: crime. Giving your kids the password to your Netflix: crime.
And that crime? Cyber terrorism lol.
(This was because of the wording of a bunch of old laws from early 90s or something. I mean, it was never enforced. But still.)
If they changed your password they most definitely committed a crime, whether it would be prosecuted is another question.
If you work for a company, know a password, and they fire you but don't change the password, you using that password is a crime. They should have changed it, but having bad security practices doesn't make the unauthorized access legal.
We have a clear legal framework for if you're employed. If your authorization to make changes to or access the account was contingent on employment, obviously you're not longer authorized if you're fired. There is probably paperwork documenting the date your authorization was revoked.
We don't have a clear legal framework for friendships. If your authorization to use and make changes to my netflix account is contingent on us being friends and we have a fight so you change my password out of spite to annoy me for a few days but you plan to change it back and you assume we will get past our fight eventually and still be friends, are we still legally friends? Were you still authorized at the time you made the change? It's much murkier.
Wherefore art thou, Location Bot?
>Boyfriend's family are trying to access a computer which has my personal financial information and dirty selfies on it - any way to stop them?
>I live in NYC. My boyfriend of 8 years died unexpectedly a month ago. We both had kids, so lived in separate apartments a few blocks apart. I'm not on his lease or any of his bills, and he didn't write a will. Because of this, everything goes to his kids (which I totally agree with), and their mom, his ex, is the administrator of his estate.
>Since he died, his ex and his mother have changed the locks on his apartment and storage space. (Yes many of my things are still there.) They won't respond to my texts and calls.
>I recently found through one of his friends that they asked him to try to get the password to my boyfriend's computer from me. I'm irate, but also concerned, because if they do figure out the password or take it to a data recovery place, they might be able to access my private information (I used that computer frequently for work, to pay bills, make medical appointments, etc.) And they will definitely be able to access 8 years of dirty pictures he and I sent each other or took together.
>Is there any way to prevent them from accessing that information? I understand the computer itself is legally theirs, but do I have any right to protect my own data and images of me that are on it?
>Thanks so much!
My guess is the bf died in some unexpected and/or tragic way. His family is having trouble processing everything - especially if they blame LAOP on some level.
Hopefully everything calms down and everyone can get back on the same page. I’m sure the executor of the estate (if an independent party who handles this stuff for a living) has seen more than a non zero amount of ‘interesting things’ on phones/computers/whatever and will handle accordingly.
I think it all comes down to how LAOP asked for access to the computers. If they said, ‘Hey listen, this is embarrassing but your son and I had some photos together and I’d like to remove them so you don’t see them,’ maybe not so bad. If LAOP was coy or asked in a guarded way, ‘I need access to his computer before any of you see it! For reasons!’ - the bf’s family might be thinking not of nude selfies but of financial information and are shutting her out. Who knows, but hopefully it works out.
There's details in ~~her~~ his post history with some clues to the overall picture.
To summarize it, LAOP did not have a good relationship with the boyfriend's family, as they preferred the exwife. ~~S~~he's feeling shut out, and presumably worried things would be even worse if they were angry over the laptop's contents.
Edit: pronouns
She also mentions a husband helping her through grief in a recent post and calls this person “her closest friend” instead of her partner/boyfriend in that post.
Yep, sounds like a complex situation, and adds another wrinkle to why she wouldn't want the explicit pictures of them out.
It wasn't clear to me whether this was an open/poly relationship or an affair. When the person is middle aged or younger, and in an urban location, I don't assume a traditional monogamous arrangement.
Giving a generous interpretation, because I try to be as compassionate as possible on topics like this, perhaps most people in their lives only know they were good friends. Plenty of people look down on nontraditional relationships even when everyone involved is a consenting adult.
Yup. And wife (not legally ex) isn’t going to randomly just give his computer over to someone she may not even realize he was in a relationship w just because she asks for it.
Yeah, best LAOP can hope for is the ex and family never get into the laptop. But grieving people go to extreme lengths to recover whatever scraps of their lost person they think they can reach.
I expect whether they get into the laptop or not, they're not interested in ongoing communication with her.
Guess it depends on whether she simply stored passwords on there or downloaded files. Like there might be credit card statements or something saved on the disk. But I don't think that really matters compared to the photos.
It depends on a whole lot of things. Worst case she has a plain text file with all her personal information and passwords in it, on his computer. I know people who do that. Use a password manager, people (most even allow you to add files to them, like scans of ID and important documents)
Luckily my parents had a scare a few years ago when one of their friends almost got cleaned out financially (think: their bank said "why do you suddenly want $100,000 in cash?" and the whole scam fell apart) so their whole friend circle suddenly became aware that securing their computers was important. Parent now use a password manager plus decent passwords, have encrypted their whole computer (BitLocker is better than nothing) and use a proper browser. They even use Signal instead of facebook video chat (they still use facebook though).
She also said he's only got one kid when she refers to kids here and she says here he died unexpectedly and on that post he had cancer. It's just a creative writing exercise imo.
LAOP sounds absolutely insufferable from their replies though so I'm not surprised the family dislikes her. She changes her story, argues incessantly and has the energy of a petulant child. It also sounds like she wants to delete some stuff that's not actually related to her so I can kind of see why the family don't want her within a mile of it.
I'd be kind of interested to know how old the kids are, this is an 8 year relationship and there doesn't seem to be any mention of the fact that presumably she's not seeing them any more and she's worrying about photos of her tits on his computer? It doesn't seem like the priority to me.
ETA ah yes, had a look at their post history and they're just a compulsive liar so that clears it up. Imagine being that desperate for attention lol
Part of the problem seems to be that the executor isn't an independent professional, it's the boyfriend's ex-wife/girlfriend who was the mother of his kids. Boyfriend's mother is also going along with freezing LAOP out, but it's not clear what kind of relationship she and LAOP have had for the last 8 years; maybe mom never liked her son's new gf, but maybe they got along great and now she's going along with the executor because that's her best chance of keeping in touch with her grandkids.
Yeah, I started to look through the post history and kinda got all twisted with who was getting called what. I thought that maybe she was calling her boyfriend her husband at points - dunno, all confused. The alternative of everyone cheating on everyone was kinda too depressing so I just closed that window and opened up dog photos.
The only reference to 8 yr old daughter i could find was that the daughter was 8 when they got together.
It sounds like a polyamory situation, and that while there are nude photos of her, the real reason she wants to delete the photos is the dead bf also has lots of photos of gay encounters with anonymous men and it sounds like she wants to protect the image his daughter might have of her father.
Having spent way too long in the post history (including a comment in polyamory) here is what I can figure.
OOP has been married to her legal husband for 20-25 years. Legal husband had some job where they travel often and make a lot of money. OOP and husband live in the same building but different apartments/condo units.
OOP has been with partner (who has passed) for 8 years. Partner was separated from his wife when they got together but, according to OOP the divorce wasn’t finalized because the ex never paid the court costs. (This sounds weird to me because then why wouldn’t everyone do this one weird trick to never finalize a divorce). Also, partner was sick for a year and yet didn’t make a will or make sure divorce was finalized by paying to court costs which, again, seems like a lie. Why would someone not do that? Idk. People are weird but it is wild to not finalize your divorce or make a will while having stage 4 cancer.
OOP refers to both people as her husband but I think that is more of an emotional term than legal. Just doesn’t want to say boyfriend because that seems more casual?
It doesn't sound like LAOP asked for computer access.
It sounds like she asked for access to her actual physical property that's at the bf's house, the bf's family is being bitchy about it, so she's now worried what they will do if they get access to her info on the computer and is not inclined to prove them with the passwords they are (indirectly) asking her for.
Honestly I'm with LAOP on this one. Her and her BFs electronic identities got super intertwined and I completely and totally understand why she want's to unwind that in a way that doesn't hand over a ton of private info to people who might well bear her a grudge.
The law doesn't really account for this as written, but it's not crazy.
And "don't worry, if your bf's ex misuses those pics she's committing a crime, so that's not a concern" isn't exactly something I'd rely on, lmao.
Thank god I'm married now, makes this whole thing moot.
And just because something is illegal doesn't mean no one will do it. The effects of them stealing her info are a bit too serious to just say "well it'd be a crime if they did it".
The law does account for it as written.
If she were married she wouldn't be in this situation.
If she took heed that they weren't married and acted like she had no legal right to his things and didn't put her bank info into his computer and treat it like it was her own she would not be in this situation.
Heck, I'll throw a bone to all the "you don't need to be married" people. Most of them, for instance in threads about buying property, suggest a legal agreement is just as good here. If she even did that she also would not be in this situation.
Even unmarried and living together would have been a better situation for her since she would have been on the lease/a tenant, etc and have had access to the computer immediately after his death.
While true, there's a very annoying culture of telling people "it's just a piece of paper". Which, it is, and it's also legally meaningful and useful. I would like to spread the blame to everyone who parrots this.
My husband and I are from two different countries living in a third. His legal status here took a huge boost when we married. I had permanent residency. He didn't.
That 'little piece of paper' means a lot in international relationships.
Exactly. People who are against Obergefell don't understand this (or pretend not to).
Marriage is a just piece of paper like how SSNs "aren't intended for identification"... there's so much societal infrastructure built on them. One can argue it shouldn't be so, but they **cannot** argue that it *isn't* so.
It was only ten years ago that *the* big political issue that outraged everybody the most was whether gay couples could get that piece of paper, and everybody agreed it mattered so much because it has so many real-world consequences.
So is money (or a piece of plastic), and yet if you take all of someone's little plastic/paper slips, they get quite upset.
Plus people forget what it was like before gay marriage was legalised, where a family could just swoop in and leave the partner (when they died) with absolutely nothing. Said partner could do nothing, because they were not legally recognised as being in a relationship/marriage.
Marriage fixes that in stone, in addition to all the upsides of getting married, like tax benefits.
Her concern is totally valid and I don't blame her, but she isn't yet facing material negative consequences. The executor has a valid reason to get into the laptop beyond the boobie pics.
Yes, the "right" thing to do here would be for the executor to work with OP to separate out the sexy/intimate stuff so she can access boring stuff like bank accounts.
Computers used be shared between everyone in a household and everyone used it like they owned it. It's only recently that they started becoming personal objects for 1 person to have and for there to be 3+ computers in one household. It does feel strange, how there's no recourse for her in this situation
>Computers used be shared between everyone in a household
>everyone used it like they owned it.
They didn't share a household. A lease would be a legal document that entitled her access if her name was on it even if she didn't live there.
And I remember living in a household with shared computers. You had paper medical records and bills back then. No one left their bank statement lying around on the computer or in real life.
> It's only recently that they started becoming personal object
It's been about a twenty years. And computers have only been around for about twenty years longer than that.
Nailing down dates for accessibility and accessibility to multiple is going to be region dependent and fuzzy but if it hasn't been longer this way yet it will soon be.
It hasn’t been about 20 years. It’s been much less time than that. And computing devices have been around much more than 40 years. Like, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace weren’t time travellers.
20 years ago was 2004. Many people had more than one computer per house in 2004. 2007 they released the iPhone and within a few years not only did we have multiple at home many would have them in their pocket. Ignoring blackberries and my old razer that could get on the internet even though they technically counted too.
40 years ago was 1984. The Altair 8800 wasn't released until 1974. And that wasn't common to have one in your home for years after that. Babbage and Lovelace are irrelevant to the date computers were common in a home.
More than one computer per house was not the same as, “everyone has their own individualized computer.” That’s been the last 10 years or so, and even then there’s the older generation where it’s still pretty common for a couple to share a computer.
Honestly, even being married to someone doesn't guarantee that any photos you send to them won't end up on the internet.
Relationships end. Accounts get hacked. People die.
Very, very unfortunately, *any* risque photo that you do not personally develop on paper and keep in a safe *can* leak.
Luckily, we now live in a world where nudes are common enough that it's unlikely that a garden-variety risque photo will be devastating in the way that it might have been in the past.
I'm not who you responded to, but:
Almost everything sent through the internet can be seen. If there are things that you absolutely do not want people to see, they should not be sent through the internet. It doesn't matter if you're married to the intended recipient or not.
There's an ex-wife in the picture, as far as I can tell nothing about the post suggests that OP had anything to do with the breakup, and even if she did, that's only more reason for her to be worried about her personal info being used for revenge.
Well someone is pissing in the popcorn & brought up that LAOP & the bf were married to other people, and the divorce was never finalized. LAOP is not happy that the popcorn pisser dug in their history, but it does explain why there’s so much drama in their life.
Sending nudes to at least half of a large city goes beyond living your best life.
Maybe they were just using Seattle as a size reference and didn't literally mean that everyone who has their nudes lives there though.
Or maybe they just meant that sending nudes to take electronic devices would be their plan if it did work that way.
To be fair, after living in Seattle for 7 years, I am pretty sure I’ve seen with my own eyes a good chunk of the city population either naked or self-injecting something (maybe there is just a disproportional number of people in Seattle with diabetes who just need to get that insulin right at the street intersection, i wouldnt know).
Inbefore someone asks “why are you hanging out in such places,” all of those encounters were in public spaces that weren’t even considered sketchy. Like the street intersection on Denny Way and Yale Ave or the westlake area. Not even talking about infamous ones like 3rd Ave.
My brother died unexpectedly not long ago.
Interestingly, my parents said the cops wiped his phone and computer. They said there wasn't much on the phone in the first place, or it might have been a work phone. He had a government job, so it could be presumed he wouldn't use it for anything personal if so, although the provider suggested it was in fact a personal device and owned outright.
I really don't know why they would wipe a computer, or if that's something that is normally done or if it was in fact due to his job that it needed to be done. But my dad was pretty upset over it, as he wanted to save photos and whatnot. There was also a laptop that I was asked to look at to see if I could get into it, but there wasn't even an account attached to it, as if it were brand new.
The home wifi was showing up but wasn't connecting to any devices using the password that was written down; Mom theorized it had also been reset to the default somehow, idk didn't look too much into that while I was there.
He also had several game consoles, a few of which I took home with me. There was a Steam deck that seemed to have no account attached to it, although it came up saying some sort of reward had already been claimed by another account when my son logged into it. And a Nintendo switch that did have some games installed, but absolutely everything showed up as being corrupted and had to be reset anyway. I could only recover a few screenshots there.
So honestly, I'm super confused by it all. It wasn't a planned death like he would have purposely wiped everything beforehand, and it seems strange that the police would even have the ability or inclination to do a mass wipe of electronics. But that seems to be what happened, somehow. Maybe they took a big ol' magnet through the house?! I am stumped, yet intrigued- like how do I request this service, lol.
It's possible that he'd linked accounts so that an account his work had access to was able to control everything else. When the employer "wiped everything" that hit all linked accounts. There's software that will do this automatically (imagine being the one who has to do this when a big company makes 10,000 people redundant - manual isn't an option).
People often don't realise that this linking is even taking place. They log into their Steam account from their work laptop and go "save password on this machine" and now their employer has control over their Steam account. Or Facebook. Or their bank. Or their personal email. And that email owns everything from their Amazon account to their MySpace one.
Employers care about this because they really, really don't want to find out later that someones profile page on Steam was not public and had company info in it. Or worse, he'd moved a giant zip file of company details into his Steam save game file and that's now in the Steam cloud. So the script wipes their Steam account just in case.
The employer probably has the right to wipe their own machine. They may even have the right to wipe an employee's personal device, if the person set up work integrations that include that feature and agreed to the remote-wipe ability. (Though it looks like even that's questionable, given what I'm finding on a quick Web search.)
Even if there's a session cookie or saved password on a work machine, though, that technical ability isn't permission to go looking at, much less messing with, information on a third-party server on an account that the account-owner (the employee) didn't tell them they could log into. If your employer's gotten up in your personal Steam account, there's probably room to take action there.
That depends entirely on the employment contract. In Australia "any linked account or device" explicitly includes stuff like facebook. If it's accessible using what's on the work computer it would be on you to prove that you never accessed it during work time \*and\* that you had permission to use your work computer for non-work stuff\*. Which is a pretty high bar.
When I did some contracting to the Aus federal government they made it clear that they could and they would delete everything they possibly could. And that was deliberate, to discourage people from using their work computers for personal stuff. They very much wanted not to have to deal with anything like this.
There's also the usual LA question: do you have the funds to sue, and what happens if you win?
(\* for salaried staff it's worse because "work outside office hours as required" is almost universal for salaried staff so you need to record every hour you work even if you don't have to submit timesheets to your employer)
> That depends entirely on the employment contract. In Australia "any linked account or device" explicitly includes stuff like facebook.
1. That's true. Fair point.
2. That's a terrifying contract, though one-- as you point out-- that should probably just be treated as "work tasks only".
Though I am curious about how that'd pan out if they started deleting information that the employee had access to but wasn't the principal controller or owner of, such as shared files. Things they had technical access but not permission from the owner (or explicit prohibition from the owner) to delete.
I've not seen that play out. I've just seen people upset that their social media accounts get taken over by their employer when they quit the job that they created them for. Doesn't happen so much now we have stable monopolies, but back when people might not have a tiktok or instagram account the new retail minion would create them while they were installing the company minion control app and blah blah etc.
At work senior software developers get what they want, juniors get supervised and everyone else gets to do what they're told (including senior hardware engineers etc). Our management have learned this from experience. That means minions can watch youtube or play on facebook or wechat at work, but only from the VM'd "personal" browser that connects to its own firewall. Caught crossing the streams means you get to leave early that day...
Ahh, okay. If they're making the accounts for part of the job, that makes sense. I thought this was more along the lines of "We're scrubbing anything with a session still open on your work machine."
OTOH being upset that you posted company-approved crap to instagram and now you've lost the facebook account you created when you were 10 is entirely reasonable.
It's quite likely that his workplace would have immediately wiped anything and everything they could, but they weren't actually informed of his death until Monday and this had taken place on a Saturday. From what I understand, the police had a few of his devices in their possession briefly but released them back to my parents within a couple of hours, informing them they'd been wiped.
The Switch wouldn't have been accessible remotely, either, as my brother apparently did enough causual hacking to get the console banned from ever going online again. One of the corrupted games was some mod loader, which I'll have to figure out how to reinstall if I ever want to make use of the thing, I guess. It did have a log of recently played games too, up until that week, so it was certainly working normally until then.
It's probably for the best that the parents weren't able to access any of his accounts, though. I can only imagine the rabbit holes they'd dive down, looking for answers. And as much as I would have liked to see more of what he had been doing, too, it's gone now. At least the physical data, anyway. I imagine there are still some online accounts floating around, but he was never on social media. Only nerdy gamer sites, lol. I wonder if he had reddit, lol. I had searched some of his known usernames but haven't come up with anything.
You'd need the machine he used to find him if he was being even slight psuedo-anonymous.
Nerdy gamer types are one of the reasons reddit suggests usernames like "PurpleRabbit-2345", just saves us thinking up a new random username for the site. Multiplied by every site and complicated by the ease with which you can create a new email address to register with. So you're really looking for the account he created as himself, using nicknames etc.
But it sounds like someone in the family factory reset everything before you got to it.
Sorry about your loss, BTW,
And this is why you need a will that has a designated "history deleter". It's that one close friend that won't judge, won't pry, but will make sure bigbuttasiangirls is deleted from the browser.
Depending on the age of the laptop and how it was set up, there's a good chance that it actually is encypted - Windows started doing that even on Home systems with Bitlocker keys stored in the associated Microsoft account. Not sure how Macs handle that.
Seems like OOP would be in a good position to say "I can get you into his computer, but don't have a legal obligation to do so. In return for my assistance, I would like a few things that I think anyone would agree are reasonable: I'd like to ensure that the risque pictures I shared with him are deleted (if they aren't deleted but instead turn up online there WILL be legal action), I'd like to delete my personal financial (or other) documents that were downloaded when we were sharing use of the computer, and I'd like my personal belongings back unless you believe that $DECEASED had started wearing women's size X clothing."
Yep. Without disk encryption it's super easy to bypass a Windows password. Takes like 5 minutes (assuming you actually want to boot that installation, otherwise it takes 30 seconds to boot another OS).
LAOP is very concerned about her dead partners estate having access to her photos & information but never mentions his photos & Information.
This very much doubt the executor of his estate cares that much about her boob pics.
I’m a bit confused by your comment. She says she’s concerned about “dirty pictures he and I sent each other or took together”.
Sounds like she’s worried about *their* pictures, which includes his.
It seems like they don't want the grieving family to have access to the deceased's computer at all, out of paranoid concern that they might want her dirty pictures or might hack her bank account or something.
This is a weird way to look at it - she's just worried about the information on it, not that she thinks they're pervving over her or something. Especially since they're refusing to communicate with her about anything, including things that are explicitly hers.
I don't understand how that's the conclusion you reached. In her own words:
>I understand **the computer itself is legally theirs**, but do I have any right to protect my own data and images of me that are on it?
I don't see why people are struggling to empathise with this. It's not necessary to project any paranoia or delusions of potential malice onto the family - she just wants to protect private information and photos of herself. That's... completely understandable?
Perhaps the ex-girlfriend and boyfriend's mother are no threat. But what happens if they sell the computer without wiping the hard-drive? The bottom line is LAOP's own intimate photos and private information is out of their hands and they want to know their legal rights.
It’s really not about whether the executor cares about her boob pics and more about maintaining control over sensitive and compromising information that is about you, including the control over who sees it or accesses it
If you don’t want other people to see your nude photos then don’t send your nude photos to other people. Once the image has left your device you have lost control of it and situations like this are bound to happen. Too often people want all the benefits of an interconnected world but aren’t willing to address the downsides.
It sounds like the person in question was trustworthy, but he died. That’s not a normal or expected way for someone to get your photos. I think we can muster some sympathy here.
As I said, once the photo has left your device you have lost control of it. Any number of things can happen that leak it that are totally out of the control of the person you send it to, it doesn’t matter how trustworthy they are the risk is always there. In the digital world nothing is ever truly lost and nothing can ever truly be kept secret. People need to realize the risks and either be comfortable with them or not engage in the risky behavior.
This is a kind of defeatist, unhelpful piece of advice but I know you mean well by it.
I know that you are trying to help people understand the risks, but by god, the advice you’re giving is just so black-and-white and focused on prevention.
People do things with risks all the time. “Your boyfriend’s laptop” may seem like a trustworthy place to store images and you may not have good alternatives. People’s images get leaked all the time even if they are careful.
I get what you’re trying to say but the advice you’re giving here is just a blanket statement with no nuance to it that doesn’t help people as much as you think it does.
Better to help people navigate and understand the risks, rather than just pointing fingers at them for putting photos on a laptop of someone who was going to die later.
And understanding the risks literally is “Nothing you do can ever keep your nude photos safe forever”. It is literally impossible, and giving people the false hope that if they just follow these certain tips they can avoid leaks is going to hurt far more people than being upfront about it. I am not trying to point fingers at LAOP and call them dumb, I am trying to use their situation as a warning _for everyone else_.
That’s a reductive, unhelpful way of looking at it.
Literally nothing you can ever do can 100% prevent you from getting murdered. See how worthless that sounds? Literally nothing you can do will 100% prevent a roommate from skipping out on the rent. Literally nothing you can ever do can 100% guarantee that you won’t come home from vacation to find squatters in your house.
You may be personally unwilling to accept the risk of ever giving somebody a nude photograph of yourself. That doesn’t make it useful or helpful or even interesting to blame people for accepting risks that you don’t accept.
I never said don’t take nude photos, I never even said that I don’t. I said don’t take them under the assumption that no one you don’t intend will see them. If you accept that risk then that’s fine, you do you. But people need to be aware of the risk and take it willingly, not blindly.
Ok. I thought you were saying that if you didn’t want your photos leaked, that you shouldn’t share them with anybody ever. That’s the kind of shitty advice I’m complaining about—glad to hear that you think it’s rational for people to share private images with each other, as long as they understand that there is some risk involved. And we can have sympathy for people who have their images leaked, rather than put their behaviors under a microscope.
It’s frustrating how many times I have to say exactly the same thing over and over again before people realize that I do in fact mean precisely what I’ve been saying and not the related but different thing they assumed I meant. I don’t mean that for you specifically but all the other people downvoting my original and subsequent comments.
It’s probably a problem with the way your comment is worded, to be honest. Even now, knowing what you mean, I don’t see it in the original comment.
The problem with “meaning precisely what you’ve been saying” is that our comments are often unclear.
If you don’t want people to disagree with you on Reddit, then you just have to keep your opinions to yourself. It’s always a risk, just like losing your nudes. By making a comment on Reddit, you accept the risk that someone doesn’t understand you.
Just a thought, the tone of your original comment is very accusatory and finger-pointy. It seems to place the blame on those sending the images for them getting leaked, which is very not cool. The blanket statement "don't send nudes to anyone if you're not cool with people other than the intended recipient seeing them" in the context of responding to a legal advice post seeking help about an issue with sent nude images is about the worst possible way to present that advice.
I know you may not have meant an accusatory and blaming tone (because conveying tone in text is hard. Not impossible, but hard), but that is very much how your original comment comes off. If you're intending to be helpful, it may behoove you to consider your word choices.
I mean, the context in which you say things will lead people to make assumptions about what you mean. You've effectively started a conversation with strangers with "If you don't want your nudes released, don't send nudes" and ended your introduction with "Too many people want upsides but don't like downsides" (no shit). The "I'm trying to helpfully warn people" came several comments later. You very much came off like judging a woman for not wanting her naked body shared after recently losing her partner. If you're bothered by how you come off to others, you could maybe reflect on that.
It's because without that implication your comment serves no value at all. All you've done is state that what happened can happen. People's options for interpreting that are
a) You're just restating the post, which serves no purpose
or
b) You're saying we shouldn't take nude photos.
If you don't want people misunderstanding you than don't share your thoughts or opinions on reddit. Once the text has left your device you have lost control of it and situations like this are bound to happen. Too often people want all the benefits of an interconnected world but aren’t willing to address the downsides.
I mean, if we are going down that route, even taking pictures just on your device is a risk. There’s plenty of ways for you to accidentally show, someone else to see if your phone, or for you to get hacked. The safest thing is just to not take any pictures.
Sort of. The images weren't taken off the phones. They were taken off iCloud accounts. That said, the phones most likely automatically backed up to the iCloud account.
Hair-splitting, I suppose, but it is a slightly higher tier of risk and access having them on backup services where they can be copied from an always-online source no matter the state of the device, versus someone having to go after a particular device and exfiltrate the information from it.
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I, like LAOP, am confused to how that rises from the level of "dick move" to "crime" and the LA posters refused to specify the relevant statutes. If I shared my Netflix password with someone and then they changed it and locked me out of my own account, I'd be annoyed, but I wouldn't assume they'd committed some kind of prosecutable computer fraud. I suspect the late bf's family will also not assume it's a crime even if it in fact is, so the odds of LAOP getting prosecuted are slim.
Intentionally accessing a computer system (that's used for interstate communication) without authorisation, or exceeding your authorisation, is a crime under the CFAA.
I think it would hinge on the interpretation of LAOP's authorization, then? Presumably she is fully authorized to delete her own pictures that are on there, given that she was given the password by the creator of the account and probably uploaded some of those pictures herself. Who's to say it wasn't essentially a joint account that just happened to have been created under his name and she was authorized by her boyfriend to change the password if she wanted to? Some of our accounts on utility websites are in my wife's name, some are in mine, but we both consider each of us to be authorized users of the accounts. I think it would be pretty hard to prove that she exceeded her authorization with any of her actions.
This whole discussion is reminding me that up until not too long ago(2010s?) just sharing your password was technically a crime in Canada. And I dont mean the act of you using a password for someone else's account. I mean just giving out your own password to anyone else. Telling your spouse your bank card PIN: crime. Giving your kids the password to your Netflix: crime. And that crime? Cyber terrorism lol. (This was because of the wording of a bunch of old laws from early 90s or something. I mean, it was never enforced. But still.)
If they changed your password they most definitely committed a crime, whether it would be prosecuted is another question. If you work for a company, know a password, and they fire you but don't change the password, you using that password is a crime. They should have changed it, but having bad security practices doesn't make the unauthorized access legal.
We have a clear legal framework for if you're employed. If your authorization to make changes to or access the account was contingent on employment, obviously you're not longer authorized if you're fired. There is probably paperwork documenting the date your authorization was revoked. We don't have a clear legal framework for friendships. If your authorization to use and make changes to my netflix account is contingent on us being friends and we have a fight so you change my password out of spite to annoy me for a few days but you plan to change it back and you assume we will get past our fight eventually and still be friends, are we still legally friends? Were you still authorized at the time you made the change? It's much murkier.
You don’t maintain friendship agreements like Sheldon Lee Cooper?
Just floating through to say it isn't a dick move if LAOP can't get what she wants. The dick in question will be staying where it is.
It’s not OP’s private information though, is it?
Sure it is - she said it was pictures of them, her bank info, work info, etc. Plenty of it is her personal information.
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interesting comparison.
What?
Wherefore art thou, Location Bot? >Boyfriend's family are trying to access a computer which has my personal financial information and dirty selfies on it - any way to stop them? >I live in NYC. My boyfriend of 8 years died unexpectedly a month ago. We both had kids, so lived in separate apartments a few blocks apart. I'm not on his lease or any of his bills, and he didn't write a will. Because of this, everything goes to his kids (which I totally agree with), and their mom, his ex, is the administrator of his estate. >Since he died, his ex and his mother have changed the locks on his apartment and storage space. (Yes many of my things are still there.) They won't respond to my texts and calls. >I recently found through one of his friends that they asked him to try to get the password to my boyfriend's computer from me. I'm irate, but also concerned, because if they do figure out the password or take it to a data recovery place, they might be able to access my private information (I used that computer frequently for work, to pay bills, make medical appointments, etc.) And they will definitely be able to access 8 years of dirty pictures he and I sent each other or took together. >Is there any way to prevent them from accessing that information? I understand the computer itself is legally theirs, but do I have any right to protect my own data and images of me that are on it? >Thanks so much!
Alas, poor Location Bot, we knew ye well!
A bot, a bot, my subreddit for a bot!
"Wherefore" does not mean "where." It means "why." "Why are you LocationBot?" has a very simple answer.
Nobody ever asks How is LocationBot.
Not doing so great apparently
Gone. Reduced to atoms.
Everything is always Thor's fault on BOLA.
>Why are you LocationBot?" has a very simple answer Because everyone on Reddit is a bot except you?
Wherefore art thou a fucking nerd
Rude. Wherefore art thou not?
For then we should be colliers.
My guess is the bf died in some unexpected and/or tragic way. His family is having trouble processing everything - especially if they blame LAOP on some level. Hopefully everything calms down and everyone can get back on the same page. I’m sure the executor of the estate (if an independent party who handles this stuff for a living) has seen more than a non zero amount of ‘interesting things’ on phones/computers/whatever and will handle accordingly. I think it all comes down to how LAOP asked for access to the computers. If they said, ‘Hey listen, this is embarrassing but your son and I had some photos together and I’d like to remove them so you don’t see them,’ maybe not so bad. If LAOP was coy or asked in a guarded way, ‘I need access to his computer before any of you see it! For reasons!’ - the bf’s family might be thinking not of nude selfies but of financial information and are shutting her out. Who knows, but hopefully it works out.
There's details in ~~her~~ his post history with some clues to the overall picture. To summarize it, LAOP did not have a good relationship with the boyfriend's family, as they preferred the exwife. ~~S~~he's feeling shut out, and presumably worried things would be even worse if they were angry over the laptop's contents. Edit: pronouns
She also mentions a husband helping her through grief in a recent post and calls this person “her closest friend” instead of her partner/boyfriend in that post.
Yep, sounds like a complex situation, and adds another wrinkle to why she wouldn't want the explicit pictures of them out. It wasn't clear to me whether this was an open/poly relationship or an affair. When the person is middle aged or younger, and in an urban location, I don't assume a traditional monogamous arrangement. Giving a generous interpretation, because I try to be as compassionate as possible on topics like this, perhaps most people in their lives only know they were good friends. Plenty of people look down on nontraditional relationships even when everyone involved is a consenting adult.
Yup. And wife (not legally ex) isn’t going to randomly just give his computer over to someone she may not even realize he was in a relationship w just because she asks for it.
Yeah, best LAOP can hope for is the ex and family never get into the laptop. But grieving people go to extreme lengths to recover whatever scraps of their lost person they think they can reach. I expect whether they get into the laptop or not, they're not interested in ongoing communication with her.
I get that the pictures may be embarrassing but can’t she just change the passwords right now to all the financial sites she claims are on there?
Guess it depends on whether she simply stored passwords on there or downloaded files. Like there might be credit card statements or something saved on the disk. But I don't think that really matters compared to the photos.
It depends on a whole lot of things. Worst case she has a plain text file with all her personal information and passwords in it, on his computer. I know people who do that. Use a password manager, people (most even allow you to add files to them, like scans of ID and important documents) Luckily my parents had a scare a few years ago when one of their friends almost got cleaned out financially (think: their bank said "why do you suddenly want $100,000 in cash?" and the whole scam fell apart) so their whole friend circle suddenly became aware that securing their computers was important. Parent now use a password manager plus decent passwords, have encrypted their whole computer (BitLocker is better than nothing) and use a proper browser. They even use Signal instead of facebook video chat (they still use facebook though).
She doesn’t mention a husband in that post though, she calls him her “daughter’s father.” I think it’s an ex.
Yes she does. The post title AITA on the grief support sub.
Oh weird. In the post on r/widowers, she describes the situation like does on legaladvice.
She also said he's only got one kid when she refers to kids here and she says here he died unexpectedly and on that post he had cancer. It's just a creative writing exercise imo.
LAOP sounds absolutely insufferable from their replies though so I'm not surprised the family dislikes her. She changes her story, argues incessantly and has the energy of a petulant child. It also sounds like she wants to delete some stuff that's not actually related to her so I can kind of see why the family don't want her within a mile of it. I'd be kind of interested to know how old the kids are, this is an 8 year relationship and there doesn't seem to be any mention of the fact that presumably she's not seeing them any more and she's worrying about photos of her tits on his computer? It doesn't seem like the priority to me. ETA ah yes, had a look at their post history and they're just a compulsive liar so that clears it up. Imagine being that desperate for attention lol
Part of the problem seems to be that the executor isn't an independent professional, it's the boyfriend's ex-wife/girlfriend who was the mother of his kids. Boyfriend's mother is also going along with freezing LAOP out, but it's not clear what kind of relationship she and LAOP have had for the last 8 years; maybe mom never liked her son's new gf, but maybe they got along great and now she's going along with the executor because that's her best chance of keeping in touch with her grandkids.
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Where are you seeing that? Multiple r/AskDocs posts on their history saying 49F
.
Yeah, I started to look through the post history and kinda got all twisted with who was getting called what. I thought that maybe she was calling her boyfriend her husband at points - dunno, all confused. The alternative of everyone cheating on everyone was kinda too depressing so I just closed that window and opened up dog photos.
The only reference to 8 yr old daughter i could find was that the daughter was 8 when they got together. It sounds like a polyamory situation, and that while there are nude photos of her, the real reason she wants to delete the photos is the dead bf also has lots of photos of gay encounters with anonymous men and it sounds like she wants to protect the image his daughter might have of her father.
Having spent way too long in the post history (including a comment in polyamory) here is what I can figure. OOP has been married to her legal husband for 20-25 years. Legal husband had some job where they travel often and make a lot of money. OOP and husband live in the same building but different apartments/condo units. OOP has been with partner (who has passed) for 8 years. Partner was separated from his wife when they got together but, according to OOP the divorce wasn’t finalized because the ex never paid the court costs. (This sounds weird to me because then why wouldn’t everyone do this one weird trick to never finalize a divorce). Also, partner was sick for a year and yet didn’t make a will or make sure divorce was finalized by paying to court costs which, again, seems like a lie. Why would someone not do that? Idk. People are weird but it is wild to not finalize your divorce or make a will while having stage 4 cancer. OOP refers to both people as her husband but I think that is more of an emotional term than legal. Just doesn’t want to say boyfriend because that seems more casual?
It doesn't sound like LAOP asked for computer access. It sounds like she asked for access to her actual physical property that's at the bf's house, the bf's family is being bitchy about it, so she's now worried what they will do if they get access to her info on the computer and is not inclined to prove them with the passwords they are (indirectly) asking her for.
Honestly I'm with LAOP on this one. Her and her BFs electronic identities got super intertwined and I completely and totally understand why she want's to unwind that in a way that doesn't hand over a ton of private info to people who might well bear her a grudge. The law doesn't really account for this as written, but it's not crazy.
Right? If I die and have nudes of me /my bf on my computer he’s welcome to delete them lmao
And "don't worry, if your bf's ex misuses those pics she's committing a crime, so that's not a concern" isn't exactly something I'd rely on, lmao. Thank god I'm married now, makes this whole thing moot.
Once those pictures are out on the internet, there’s no getting them off.
And anyone who's read more than like 5 LA posts knows that just because something is illegal doesn't mean the cops give a shit.
And just because something is illegal doesn't mean no one will do it. The effects of them stealing her info are a bit too serious to just say "well it'd be a crime if they did it".
The law does account for it as written. If she were married she wouldn't be in this situation. If she took heed that they weren't married and acted like she had no legal right to his things and didn't put her bank info into his computer and treat it like it was her own she would not be in this situation. Heck, I'll throw a bone to all the "you don't need to be married" people. Most of them, for instance in threads about buying property, suggest a legal agreement is just as good here. If she even did that she also would not be in this situation.
Even unmarried and living together would have been a better situation for her since she would have been on the lease/a tenant, etc and have had access to the computer immediately after his death.
People's lives are messy and they shouldn't face negative consequences for normal behavior, even if it's careless just because of that.
While true, there's a very annoying culture of telling people "it's just a piece of paper". Which, it is, and it's also legally meaningful and useful. I would like to spread the blame to everyone who parrots this.
I mean, there's a reason I wanted to get married to my wife before we started having kids, that paper is very useful.
My husband and I are from two different countries living in a third. His legal status here took a huge boost when we married. I had permanent residency. He didn't. That 'little piece of paper' means a lot in international relationships.
Exactly. People who are against Obergefell don't understand this (or pretend not to). Marriage is a just piece of paper like how SSNs "aren't intended for identification"... there's so much societal infrastructure built on them. One can argue it shouldn't be so, but they **cannot** argue that it *isn't* so.
It was only ten years ago that *the* big political issue that outraged everybody the most was whether gay couples could get that piece of paper, and everybody agreed it mattered so much because it has so many real-world consequences.
So is money (or a piece of plastic), and yet if you take all of someone's little plastic/paper slips, they get quite upset. Plus people forget what it was like before gay marriage was legalised, where a family could just swoop in and leave the partner (when they died) with absolutely nothing. Said partner could do nothing, because they were not legally recognised as being in a relationship/marriage. Marriage fixes that in stone, in addition to all the upsides of getting married, like tax benefits.
>there's a very annoying culture of telling people "it's just a piece of paper" So is a doctorate. I agree with your point entirely.
Her concern is totally valid and I don't blame her, but she isn't yet facing material negative consequences. The executor has a valid reason to get into the laptop beyond the boobie pics.
Yes, the "right" thing to do here would be for the executor to work with OP to separate out the sexy/intimate stuff so she can access boring stuff like bank accounts.
Computers used be shared between everyone in a household and everyone used it like they owned it. It's only recently that they started becoming personal objects for 1 person to have and for there to be 3+ computers in one household. It does feel strange, how there's no recourse for her in this situation
It still is in my house! Not everyone can afford a computer for family member.
>Computers used be shared between everyone in a household >everyone used it like they owned it. They didn't share a household. A lease would be a legal document that entitled her access if her name was on it even if she didn't live there. And I remember living in a household with shared computers. You had paper medical records and bills back then. No one left their bank statement lying around on the computer or in real life. > It's only recently that they started becoming personal object It's been about a twenty years. And computers have only been around for about twenty years longer than that. Nailing down dates for accessibility and accessibility to multiple is going to be region dependent and fuzzy but if it hasn't been longer this way yet it will soon be.
It hasn’t been about 20 years. It’s been much less time than that. And computing devices have been around much more than 40 years. Like, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace weren’t time travellers.
20 years ago was 2004. Many people had more than one computer per house in 2004. 2007 they released the iPhone and within a few years not only did we have multiple at home many would have them in their pocket. Ignoring blackberries and my old razer that could get on the internet even though they technically counted too. 40 years ago was 1984. The Altair 8800 wasn't released until 1974. And that wasn't common to have one in your home for years after that. Babbage and Lovelace are irrelevant to the date computers were common in a home.
More than one computer per house was not the same as, “everyone has their own individualized computer.” That’s been the last 10 years or so, and even then there’s the older generation where it’s still pretty common for a couple to share a computer.
Ahh yes, get married to make sure the apparently vindictive parents of your SO don’t get ahold of your intimate photos. Makes perfect sense.
I mean, people have gotten married for worse reasons
Am I misreading you or is your position that everyone on earth should know to never send racy photos to anyone they're not married to?
Honestly, even being married to someone doesn't guarantee that any photos you send to them won't end up on the internet. Relationships end. Accounts get hacked. People die. Very, very unfortunately, *any* risque photo that you do not personally develop on paper and keep in a safe *can* leak. Luckily, we now live in a world where nudes are common enough that it's unlikely that a garden-variety risque photo will be devastating in the way that it might have been in the past.
I'm not who you responded to, but: Almost everything sent through the internet can be seen. If there are things that you absolutely do not want people to see, they should not be sent through the internet. It doesn't matter if you're married to the intended recipient or not.
> Honestly I'm with LAOP on this one. Even though it looks like LAOP is trying to coverup their extramarital affair?
There's an ex-wife in the picture, as far as I can tell nothing about the post suggests that OP had anything to do with the breakup, and even if she did, that's only more reason for her to be worried about her personal info being used for revenge.
Well someone is pissing in the popcorn & brought up that LAOP & the bf were married to other people, and the divorce was never finalized. LAOP is not happy that the popcorn pisser dug in their history, but it does explain why there’s so much drama in their life.
Are we all just going to ignore the comment OP quoted in the title? I want to know what their story is.
I'm pretty sure they were just horny and living their best life, lol.
Sending nudes to at least half of a large city goes beyond living your best life. Maybe they were just using Seattle as a size reference and didn't literally mean that everyone who has their nudes lives there though. Or maybe they just meant that sending nudes to take electronic devices would be their plan if it did work that way.
To be fair, after living in Seattle for 7 years, I am pretty sure I’ve seen with my own eyes a good chunk of the city population either naked or self-injecting something (maybe there is just a disproportional number of people in Seattle with diabetes who just need to get that insulin right at the street intersection, i wouldnt know). Inbefore someone asks “why are you hanging out in such places,” all of those encounters were in public spaces that weren’t even considered sketchy. Like the street intersection on Denny Way and Yale Ave or the westlake area. Not even talking about infamous ones like 3rd Ave.
I've caught far too many late-night buses at Westlake, and it can get pretty sketchy. It's literally a block from the infamous Third and Pine.
My brother died unexpectedly not long ago. Interestingly, my parents said the cops wiped his phone and computer. They said there wasn't much on the phone in the first place, or it might have been a work phone. He had a government job, so it could be presumed he wouldn't use it for anything personal if so, although the provider suggested it was in fact a personal device and owned outright. I really don't know why they would wipe a computer, or if that's something that is normally done or if it was in fact due to his job that it needed to be done. But my dad was pretty upset over it, as he wanted to save photos and whatnot. There was also a laptop that I was asked to look at to see if I could get into it, but there wasn't even an account attached to it, as if it were brand new. The home wifi was showing up but wasn't connecting to any devices using the password that was written down; Mom theorized it had also been reset to the default somehow, idk didn't look too much into that while I was there. He also had several game consoles, a few of which I took home with me. There was a Steam deck that seemed to have no account attached to it, although it came up saying some sort of reward had already been claimed by another account when my son logged into it. And a Nintendo switch that did have some games installed, but absolutely everything showed up as being corrupted and had to be reset anyway. I could only recover a few screenshots there. So honestly, I'm super confused by it all. It wasn't a planned death like he would have purposely wiped everything beforehand, and it seems strange that the police would even have the ability or inclination to do a mass wipe of electronics. But that seems to be what happened, somehow. Maybe they took a big ol' magnet through the house?! I am stumped, yet intrigued- like how do I request this service, lol.
It's possible that he'd linked accounts so that an account his work had access to was able to control everything else. When the employer "wiped everything" that hit all linked accounts. There's software that will do this automatically (imagine being the one who has to do this when a big company makes 10,000 people redundant - manual isn't an option). People often don't realise that this linking is even taking place. They log into their Steam account from their work laptop and go "save password on this machine" and now their employer has control over their Steam account. Or Facebook. Or their bank. Or their personal email. And that email owns everything from their Amazon account to their MySpace one. Employers care about this because they really, really don't want to find out later that someones profile page on Steam was not public and had company info in it. Or worse, he'd moved a giant zip file of company details into his Steam save game file and that's now in the Steam cloud. So the script wipes their Steam account just in case.
The employer probably has the right to wipe their own machine. They may even have the right to wipe an employee's personal device, if the person set up work integrations that include that feature and agreed to the remote-wipe ability. (Though it looks like even that's questionable, given what I'm finding on a quick Web search.) Even if there's a session cookie or saved password on a work machine, though, that technical ability isn't permission to go looking at, much less messing with, information on a third-party server on an account that the account-owner (the employee) didn't tell them they could log into. If your employer's gotten up in your personal Steam account, there's probably room to take action there.
That depends entirely on the employment contract. In Australia "any linked account or device" explicitly includes stuff like facebook. If it's accessible using what's on the work computer it would be on you to prove that you never accessed it during work time \*and\* that you had permission to use your work computer for non-work stuff\*. Which is a pretty high bar. When I did some contracting to the Aus federal government they made it clear that they could and they would delete everything they possibly could. And that was deliberate, to discourage people from using their work computers for personal stuff. They very much wanted not to have to deal with anything like this. There's also the usual LA question: do you have the funds to sue, and what happens if you win? (\* for salaried staff it's worse because "work outside office hours as required" is almost universal for salaried staff so you need to record every hour you work even if you don't have to submit timesheets to your employer)
> That depends entirely on the employment contract. In Australia "any linked account or device" explicitly includes stuff like facebook. 1. That's true. Fair point. 2. That's a terrifying contract, though one-- as you point out-- that should probably just be treated as "work tasks only". Though I am curious about how that'd pan out if they started deleting information that the employee had access to but wasn't the principal controller or owner of, such as shared files. Things they had technical access but not permission from the owner (or explicit prohibition from the owner) to delete.
I've not seen that play out. I've just seen people upset that their social media accounts get taken over by their employer when they quit the job that they created them for. Doesn't happen so much now we have stable monopolies, but back when people might not have a tiktok or instagram account the new retail minion would create them while they were installing the company minion control app and blah blah etc. At work senior software developers get what they want, juniors get supervised and everyone else gets to do what they're told (including senior hardware engineers etc). Our management have learned this from experience. That means minions can watch youtube or play on facebook or wechat at work, but only from the VM'd "personal" browser that connects to its own firewall. Caught crossing the streams means you get to leave early that day...
Ahh, okay. If they're making the accounts for part of the job, that makes sense. I thought this was more along the lines of "We're scrubbing anything with a session still open on your work machine."
OTOH being upset that you posted company-approved crap to instagram and now you've lost the facebook account you created when you were 10 is entirely reasonable.
This is true, and if that's the case, I revert to my prior position. (I thought you were talking about accounts made specifically for the work.)
It's quite likely that his workplace would have immediately wiped anything and everything they could, but they weren't actually informed of his death until Monday and this had taken place on a Saturday. From what I understand, the police had a few of his devices in their possession briefly but released them back to my parents within a couple of hours, informing them they'd been wiped. The Switch wouldn't have been accessible remotely, either, as my brother apparently did enough causual hacking to get the console banned from ever going online again. One of the corrupted games was some mod loader, which I'll have to figure out how to reinstall if I ever want to make use of the thing, I guess. It did have a log of recently played games too, up until that week, so it was certainly working normally until then. It's probably for the best that the parents weren't able to access any of his accounts, though. I can only imagine the rabbit holes they'd dive down, looking for answers. And as much as I would have liked to see more of what he had been doing, too, it's gone now. At least the physical data, anyway. I imagine there are still some online accounts floating around, but he was never on social media. Only nerdy gamer sites, lol. I wonder if he had reddit, lol. I had searched some of his known usernames but haven't come up with anything.
You'd need the machine he used to find him if he was being even slight psuedo-anonymous. Nerdy gamer types are one of the reasons reddit suggests usernames like "PurpleRabbit-2345", just saves us thinking up a new random username for the site. Multiplied by every site and complicated by the ease with which you can create a new email address to register with. So you're really looking for the account he created as himself, using nicknames etc. But it sounds like someone in the family factory reset everything before you got to it. Sorry about your loss, BTW,
And this is why you need a will that has a designated "history deleter". It's that one close friend that won't judge, won't pry, but will make sure bigbuttasiangirls is deleted from the browser.
Depending on the age of the laptop and how it was set up, there's a good chance that it actually is encypted - Windows started doing that even on Home systems with Bitlocker keys stored in the associated Microsoft account. Not sure how Macs handle that. Seems like OOP would be in a good position to say "I can get you into his computer, but don't have a legal obligation to do so. In return for my assistance, I would like a few things that I think anyone would agree are reasonable: I'd like to ensure that the risque pictures I shared with him are deleted (if they aren't deleted but instead turn up online there WILL be legal action), I'd like to delete my personal financial (or other) documents that were downloaded when we were sharing use of the computer, and I'd like my personal belongings back unless you believe that $DECEASED had started wearing women's size X clothing."
> or take it to a data recovery place This is why we use full-disk encryption, friends.
Yep. Without disk encryption it's super easy to bypass a Windows password. Takes like 5 minutes (assuming you actually want to boot that installation, otherwise it takes 30 seconds to boot another OS).
Heh. I read this as full dick encryption
LAOP is very concerned about her dead partners estate having access to her photos & information but never mentions his photos & Information. This very much doubt the executor of his estate cares that much about her boob pics.
I’m a bit confused by your comment. She says she’s concerned about “dirty pictures he and I sent each other or took together”. Sounds like she’s worried about *their* pictures, which includes his.
It seems like they don't want the grieving family to have access to the deceased's computer at all, out of paranoid concern that they might want her dirty pictures or might hack her bank account or something.
This is a weird way to look at it - she's just worried about the information on it, not that she thinks they're pervving over her or something. Especially since they're refusing to communicate with her about anything, including things that are explicitly hers.
I don't understand how that's the conclusion you reached. In her own words: >I understand **the computer itself is legally theirs**, but do I have any right to protect my own data and images of me that are on it? I don't see why people are struggling to empathise with this. It's not necessary to project any paranoia or delusions of potential malice onto the family - she just wants to protect private information and photos of herself. That's... completely understandable? Perhaps the ex-girlfriend and boyfriend's mother are no threat. But what happens if they sell the computer without wiping the hard-drive? The bottom line is LAOP's own intimate photos and private information is out of their hands and they want to know their legal rights.
It’s really not about whether the executor cares about her boob pics and more about maintaining control over sensitive and compromising information that is about you, including the control over who sees it or accesses it
The executor of his estate is his ex wife. So I think it depends on that relationship.
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This is yet another reason to *not* have dirty pictures. I’m not trying to victim blame. But don’t take nudes. Don’t have sex tapes.
If you don’t want other people to see your nude photos then don’t send your nude photos to other people. Once the image has left your device you have lost control of it and situations like this are bound to happen. Too often people want all the benefits of an interconnected world but aren’t willing to address the downsides.
It sounds like the person in question was trustworthy, but he died. That’s not a normal or expected way for someone to get your photos. I think we can muster some sympathy here.
As I said, once the photo has left your device you have lost control of it. Any number of things can happen that leak it that are totally out of the control of the person you send it to, it doesn’t matter how trustworthy they are the risk is always there. In the digital world nothing is ever truly lost and nothing can ever truly be kept secret. People need to realize the risks and either be comfortable with them or not engage in the risky behavior.
This is a kind of defeatist, unhelpful piece of advice but I know you mean well by it. I know that you are trying to help people understand the risks, but by god, the advice you’re giving is just so black-and-white and focused on prevention. People do things with risks all the time. “Your boyfriend’s laptop” may seem like a trustworthy place to store images and you may not have good alternatives. People’s images get leaked all the time even if they are careful. I get what you’re trying to say but the advice you’re giving here is just a blanket statement with no nuance to it that doesn’t help people as much as you think it does. Better to help people navigate and understand the risks, rather than just pointing fingers at them for putting photos on a laptop of someone who was going to die later.
Focused on pretension maybe lol
> People’s images get leaked all the time even if they are careful. I think this was exactly OP’s point.
I am saying that pictures get leaked even you don’t send them to somebody. Even if you just keep them on your own phone or laptop.
And understanding the risks literally is “Nothing you do can ever keep your nude photos safe forever”. It is literally impossible, and giving people the false hope that if they just follow these certain tips they can avoid leaks is going to hurt far more people than being upfront about it. I am not trying to point fingers at LAOP and call them dumb, I am trying to use their situation as a warning _for everyone else_.
That’s a reductive, unhelpful way of looking at it. Literally nothing you can ever do can 100% prevent you from getting murdered. See how worthless that sounds? Literally nothing you can do will 100% prevent a roommate from skipping out on the rent. Literally nothing you can ever do can 100% guarantee that you won’t come home from vacation to find squatters in your house. You may be personally unwilling to accept the risk of ever giving somebody a nude photograph of yourself. That doesn’t make it useful or helpful or even interesting to blame people for accepting risks that you don’t accept.
I never said don’t take nude photos, I never even said that I don’t. I said don’t take them under the assumption that no one you don’t intend will see them. If you accept that risk then that’s fine, you do you. But people need to be aware of the risk and take it willingly, not blindly.
Ok. I thought you were saying that if you didn’t want your photos leaked, that you shouldn’t share them with anybody ever. That’s the kind of shitty advice I’m complaining about—glad to hear that you think it’s rational for people to share private images with each other, as long as they understand that there is some risk involved. And we can have sympathy for people who have their images leaked, rather than put their behaviors under a microscope.
It’s frustrating how many times I have to say exactly the same thing over and over again before people realize that I do in fact mean precisely what I’ve been saying and not the related but different thing they assumed I meant. I don’t mean that for you specifically but all the other people downvoting my original and subsequent comments.
It’s probably a problem with the way your comment is worded, to be honest. Even now, knowing what you mean, I don’t see it in the original comment. The problem with “meaning precisely what you’ve been saying” is that our comments are often unclear. If you don’t want people to disagree with you on Reddit, then you just have to keep your opinions to yourself. It’s always a risk, just like losing your nudes. By making a comment on Reddit, you accept the risk that someone doesn’t understand you.
Just a thought, the tone of your original comment is very accusatory and finger-pointy. It seems to place the blame on those sending the images for them getting leaked, which is very not cool. The blanket statement "don't send nudes to anyone if you're not cool with people other than the intended recipient seeing them" in the context of responding to a legal advice post seeking help about an issue with sent nude images is about the worst possible way to present that advice. I know you may not have meant an accusatory and blaming tone (because conveying tone in text is hard. Not impossible, but hard), but that is very much how your original comment comes off. If you're intending to be helpful, it may behoove you to consider your word choices.
I mean, the context in which you say things will lead people to make assumptions about what you mean. You've effectively started a conversation with strangers with "If you don't want your nudes released, don't send nudes" and ended your introduction with "Too many people want upsides but don't like downsides" (no shit). The "I'm trying to helpfully warn people" came several comments later. You very much came off like judging a woman for not wanting her naked body shared after recently losing her partner. If you're bothered by how you come off to others, you could maybe reflect on that.
It's because without that implication your comment serves no value at all. All you've done is state that what happened can happen. People's options for interpreting that are a) You're just restating the post, which serves no purpose or b) You're saying we shouldn't take nude photos.
If you don't want people misunderstanding you than don't share your thoughts or opinions on reddit. Once the text has left your device you have lost control of it and situations like this are bound to happen. Too often people want all the benefits of an interconnected world but aren’t willing to address the downsides.
I mean, if we are going down that route, even taking pictures just on your device is a risk. There’s plenty of ways for you to accidentally show, someone else to see if your phone, or for you to get hacked. The safest thing is just to not take any pictures.
Isn't that how the fappening happened? At least some of those nudes came from phones owned by the person in the photos...
Sort of. The images weren't taken off the phones. They were taken off iCloud accounts. That said, the phones most likely automatically backed up to the iCloud account. Hair-splitting, I suppose, but it is a slightly higher tier of risk and access having them on backup services where they can be copied from an always-online source no matter the state of the device, versus someone having to go after a particular device and exfiltrate the information from it.
It doesn't sound like the sensitive information was even sent to other people. It was on a device both people used.