Need advice on Harassing Emails

marsmommy3

Hi, I'm in a bit of a bind with a situation that has been going on for sometime now regarding harrassing emails and the questionable idenity of the sender. I really need to know the following, and will be extremely greatful of any advice or information anyone can give me on this subject:


1)Could someone thats a bit of a computer expert, irrespective of the questionable legality of it, remote desktop by request into another person’s
windows based laptop, resurrect a hotmail email account that the person deleted, recover deleted emails and from those emails ascertain the IP ADDRESS, Road & Town that the emails were sent from(the IP address is from Sky.Com) - All within 2 hours.


2)Then.... after the suspected sender of emails was confronted and became 'scared' they supposedly hacked into the hotmail account of the person above and deleted their account thinking they were destroying the evidence...


3)Then... the “expert” in the first paragraph was able to re-hack into the hotmail account that was deleted again in the 2nd paragraph, re-enable it, deduce the ip address and name of the computer that deleted the account and then the expert deleted the account himself so that no-one could ever resurrect it again, all within an hour or so again.


Does this sound a plausible scenario? I've been told that all the above has happened and it's sounding a little far-fetched to me the more i think about it.

Also, if someone did this via remote access, would the owner of the laptop be able to see exactly all the information the "expert" was pulling up regarding the names and addresses of people apparently sending the harrassing emails as and when the expert found it?

Thrax

No.

However if you suspect criminal activities, please contact your nearest cybercrime division.

primesuspect

Not technically possible. As Thrax said, contact the authorities if you're being harassed.

marsmommy3

Thanks for the answers guys.

Basically it not me directly getting the emails. My best friends fiancée has been, but the emails were anonymous and being made to look like they were from either myself, my sister or 2 of my other very close friends. I was told the above happened via a guy that only the fiancée knew, and apparently he traced the messages down to one of my very good friends, but they are adamant that they haven't done it.

It's driving me mad because i'm way out of my school days and these sorts of things should not be happening to me! Today, my friend, the guy who's fiancée was getting these msgs suddenly turned on me, thinking im something to do with it. Now I think it through, I pleaded with the couple from the start to take the laptop to the police to get it sorted, but there was always a reason not too, including the fiancée had accidentally deleted the emails, and then later she accidentally deleted the account, and even later she had spoke with a policeman but they said they wouldn't be able to do anything about it until it had been going on for 18 months. Also, when my friend had had enough of these messages, me and my sister suggested to give the laptop to my dad to recover the emails so they could go to the police (as it had been going on for 5-6 months at this point), but then the fiancée said she knew a guy who could find it out, tho it wouldn't be a legal thing he had done. I'm now beginning to question whether the fiancée might possibly be fabricating the whole thing, whether this apparent computer expert really exists and whether it was actually some sick game the fiancée is playing to pull my friend away from his friends and family. I thought that if i could find out if this sort of thing can be done, legally or illegally then i might get closer to the real culprit of these nasty msgs. Rah, its a headache!!!

Thrax

I'll just say it again for clarity: None of the things that you have described are technically possible. At all. Not possible.

kryyst

Your scenario is impossible. Little segments are possible, like you could remotely get onto someone else's computer if they sent you a request. But then they are remotely on it. So you would be able to see everything they are doing.

But for all the hotmail stuff. IP's aren't tracked first of all and you can't for all intents and purposes obtain someone's physical address from an IP. Only an Internet provider can find out that information and only because they have your account information and can link an IP number to an active account. So that portion of it can't be done at all.

As for the whole resurrecting account insanity. Again, no. But maybe in a scenario where they were using Outlook Express or Thunderbird or some other offline mail client they could have had hotmail emails stored on it that way which someone could theoretically have read. But again not through some voodoo magic means. They would have needed direct access to that computer either by sitting in front of it or by someone remotely allowing them onto it.

So like I said your whole proposed situation is impossible. But little bits and pieces of it could maybe (though 99.9% unlikely) could happen. Especially within 2hrs.

I'll give you a more likely scenario though. This person knows you in real life. You've emailed them before and they in turn know your email addresses. They felt like being vindictive so they simply sent out emails that look like they are coming from someone else (you or a friend whatever) but again that would only be at a surface level.

Also make sure you've got the fact straight. It may not even be a hotmail it could have been just a regular email account. People who don't know much about computers mix up common terms. So suddenly they call email hotmail even if it's not, same way people call facial tissue paper kleenex even though it's just a specific brand of kleenex if you get my point.

I don't doubt someone is being harassed, that's very common and existed long before computers. It's your specific scenario that's impossible.