A computer repair tech has been arrested for spying on women undressing and showering, via software he installed on the Mac laptops he repaired. The twist is that 20-year-old Trevor Harwell allegedly configured a scareware error message that read: "You should fix your internal sensor soon. If unsure what to do, try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor." This apparently led to many victims bringing their laptops into the bathroom.

It is not known how many victims succumbed to this trick, though a San Francisco Chronicle report wrote of "hundreds of thousands of pictures" that were found on Harwell's computer when police in Fullerton, California, arrested him.

While this is the work of one individual, you can't help but wonder at the prospects of renegade hackers using spyware to commandeer company laptops sent in for repair. With the trend of government-sponsored hacking of late, it is not implausible that corporate espionage may entail paying off computer repairmen--which should dissuade some businesses from outsourcing the maintenance of company laptops.

What are your thoughts on this?

For more:
- check out this article at The San Francisco Chronicle
- check out this article at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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