Oi! Verizon leaked my fiancée's nude pix to her ex-coworker, says bloke A bloke is suing Verizon Wireless in the US because, he claims, personal pictures from his Verizon phone, including intimate snaps of his fiancée, turned up on the phone of another subscriber – who happened to know her. "On February 8, 2018, the plaintiff discovered for the first time that Verizon’s advertisements about the …
That her former coworker just happened to be the one affected by this mysterious cloud problem? Seems FAR more likely that the fiancée sent two men the same nude selfies, and managed to get her way too gullible man to believe "wow, must be some sort of a Verizon issue" and he believed it so fully he's suing.
She better hope that Verizon's attorney doesn't look to deeply. If Verizon logs show MMS of identical sizes sent to both men on/around the same days it will basically prove she was lying - and any man who is upset enough about this to take it to court will almost certainly be upset enough about it to break off the engagement when he learns the truth.
Probably the co-worker showed the pictures to someone who "recognized" her (hopefully her face is in some of these otherwise she has a distinctive tattoo or really gets around) and her man found out.
She probably sent them by mistake. I have been accidentally texting a female friend who has the same first initial as my wife so is the next on the list of contacts and due to my near vision ageing. Texts were meant for my wife, luckily they were just me whinging about traffic.
Indeed it's extremely unlikely that any pictures were sent by MMS, if they were there's be less of a problem due to the crap resolution.
Far more likely is WhatsApp or similar end to end encrypted platform meaning evidence will be hard to corroborate with logs, the only solution would be to show the pictures in court.
"ANY women's naked body looks TWENTY THOUSAND times better than a guy's"
I sincerely hope you do not truly believe that, because there's plenty of evidence to be found on the internet to thoroughly destroy any notion of this. Naked women can be just as grotesquely, horrifyingly disgusting as any males body.
MMS? Are we still in the 90s?
Coincidentally, one of my friends sent me an MMS of a classic car he'd spotted which he knew I'd appreciate just last weekend...
Yes, I did reply "Nice... But if you sent the pics via whatsapp/telegram/email etc, I might be able to see more than the 2 dozen pixel in an MMS Grandad!".
I can't remember the last time I received an MMS before that though... It was probably the same friend though.
"What are the odds
That her former coworker just happened to be the one affected by this mysterious cloud problem?"
Stranger things happen. I had a problem with myVoIP PSTN number in Sydney once. Instead of reporting my DDI number if forwarded a totally different number. So I called the number and was surprised to have it answered by a friend the other side of Sydney.
No way was it a config issue at my end as I did not know the guys VoIP number and the VSP admitted it was a config issue at their end.
So yes coincidences can happen in the Tech World.
"What are the odds
That her former coworker just happened to be the one affected by this mysterious cloud problem? "
I wonder if rather than a cloud problem it's some sort of in-store content transfer service when you buy a new handset. It sounds like the phones were bought in the same store, which is likely given they are former co-workers so presumably live near each other, so this could easily be another staff cock up in-store.
Depends where the fault is.
If it's a fault which at some point involves the phone's contacts list the probability is much higher, thus the fact it happenned to this person increases the probability that it's that kind of fault.
Personally I consider all mobile phones to be inherently insecure, but I know that's not a popular standpoint.
>Personally I consider all mobile phones to be inherently insecure, but I know that's not a popular standpoint.
Unpopular it might be but its true. I assume that nothing is private or anonymous unless I securely encrypt it myself using procedures that are guaranteed not to leave plaintext copies lying around. (No, I'm not paranoid -- I'm not important enough to have information that needs to be that secure -- but if I did then I'd be kidding myself if I thought that providers would keep my information and identity confidential.)
Agree on that....it could have been ANYONE....BUT....with a woman's body being displayed in all their naked glory, it will be looked at MUCH CLOSER THAN any guy's naked body. It's a good thing that if ANY nude photo of me ever got out on the internet, the repulsion felt by most people seeing a naked fat old f$%^& WILL THOROUGHLY DISCOURAGE ANY FURTHER SHARING!
Sometimes NOT looking like an Adonis (or Aphrodite) works to one's advantage when it comes to the Internet photo-sharing culture! Let's face it! ANY women's naked body looks TWENTY THOUSAND times better than a guy's, so of course it will be shared at 100x the rate of any male's naked photo!
It may be political dynamite to say this, but on the Internet, the photo-sharing rates between men's and women's nude photos are so disparate that by definition, the fall-out effects on a personal and professional basis will outlast and be waaaay out-of-proportion compared with a man's nude photos.
"ANY women's naked body looks TWENTY THOUSAND times better than a guy's"
No. Just plain wrong.
Reminds me of the time my wife and I argued for a week about the gender of one of our neighbors. I was convinced it was a bloke (it probably wasn't). Either way, I think we both agreed on not wanting to see ANY naked pictures of that person, on the internet, in an art gallery or anywhere where our travels may take us. I am a staunch supporter of data security now that I come to think of it.
Further more, men are more handsome by default. As proof I offer you the sales statistics from the cosmetics industry, which is heavily reliant upon women buying their crap by the bucketful.
"Fuller said Verizon hasn't explained how the highly private images escaped onto the other guy's phone, but he speculated that something went wrong with Verizon Cloud, the US mobile gisnt's online storage service for photos and files."
Well he would say that wouldn't he? He's gonna be raking in lawyer fees and hoping Verizon pay Smith off just to make the case go away and Fuller can pocket a sizeable percentage of that settlement.
Everyone else though, I suspect we've got a more believable idea of how those photos ended up there.
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No, not more of THAT info...what I meant was...
How did the photos appear to the third party?
Did they appear in HIS "cloud" amongst his own pictures or were they discovered on an unsecured cloud?
Besides, every cloud "privacy" policy I've ever read says that anything uploaded to it can be used by the vendor (or their "affiliates) or sold to whomever buys the company when they go tits-up.
Also, depending on what apps are installed on the device, this data might get slurpped up and sent to a different cloud by some bogus "cleaner/battery saver/antivirus/anti-hacking" app.
"every cloud "privacy" policy I've ever read says that anything uploaded to it can be used by the vendor (or their "affiliates) or sold to whomever buys the company when they go tits-up."
An unfortunate/appropriate* turn of phrase, given the story's subject matter.
*delete according to mood
" "every cloud "privacy" policy I've ever read says that anything uploaded to it can be used by the vendor (or their "affiliates) or sold to whomever buys the company when they go tits-up."
An unfortunate/appropriate* turn of phrase, given the story's subject matter.
*delete according to mood"
Well, short of photographic evidence we don't know if they are up or down in this case...
I'll get my coat.
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It is hard to assess the value of quite a lot of things and thus also hard how to compensate the loss of such thing. But these lawsuits you have over there are just ridiculous. It is not even she that sues. How on earth does the damage caused by ONE other person seen your girlfriends vagina amount to four million dollars?
I'm generally against big law suits, but on this occasion I disagree with you, and agree with the plaintiff.
In US terms $4m sounds ridiculously proportionate - in that actually the crime is a) technical error, and then b) saying bollocks to you unless you get a big lawyer.
If the issue is genuine then I sincerely hope Verizon get a seriously bloody nose in public for being complete arseholes.
> How on earth does the damage caused by ONE other person seen your girlfriends vagina amount to four million dollars?
If the direct cause of this was a breach of security or even worse, plain malfunction, of one of their services handling private customer data, the potential consequences could be catastrophic¹ and four million seems way too low.
¹ Instead of a few selfies it could have been sensitive business intelligence, intellectual property, plans for world domination, etc.
"How on earth does the damage caused by ONE other person seen your girlfriends vagina amount to four million dollars?"
The point is punitive damages. It's not that the victim suffered so much that only $4 million can make them feel better, but that the perpetrator needs to be fined enough for them to actually notice and, hopefully, do something about the problem. It's the same reason everyone complains when the likes of Google get fined $100k or so; when you're raking in billions that's not even a rounding error.
Or for a more flippant answer, at least 95% of it goes to the lawyers, so they need to ask for enough that the plaintiff actually gets something.
Thanks for informing me of punitive damages. A term I have heard lots of times, but never have really taken the time to read up on. Now I have, and looking back on my original statement I have to say I have to let it stay. Maybe refine it a little and just say that punitive damages is mindblowingly ridiculous.
Civil lawsuits should be that somebody asks the state to settle a dispute and possibly decide a compensation for a loss due to said dispute. If it follows that crime might have been committed then the state should bring up criminal charges in addition. Financial gain (as in gain and not compensation) for any party should never be the outcome.
"Financial gain (as in gain and not compensation) for any party should never be the outcome."
While I understand the sentiment, levying a fine from one party must always result in another party having an equal financial gain. You can argue about how big they should be and who should get the money, but unless you disagree with all fines in principle you can't say that no-one should gain from them because that's impossible. Even in criminal cases, where the majority of money goes to the lawyers state, it's common to have some kind of victim surcharge or restitution fund.
Also:
""..could have been.." Can you sue for things that could have happened in USA?"
Yes, of course, for the same reason things like attempted murder or driving while intoxicated are crimes. It's not necessary for actual harm to be done, only that an action is deemed to have sufficient potential for harm that legal penalties are justified to discourage it. There's no reason civil suits should be any different - if someone attempts to harm your reputation, the fact that they're not very good at it doesn't mean you can't sue them for defamation.
On top of that, it's worth remembering that you can sue anyone for literally anything. Cases that are obviously without merit will generally be thrown out almost as soon as they're filed. The fact that someone attempts to sue for what looks like a stupid reason, or asks for what sounds like a stupid amount of money, doesn't imply anything bad about legal system; it's the outcome of the case that actually matters.
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