Are Pornographers Using Your Computer to Display Porn?

A 40-year-old former substitute teacher from Connecticut is facing a sentencing following her conviction for endangering students by exposing them to pornographic material that was displayed on the classroom computer may be facing serious prison time. Is she guilty or a victim of adware or spyware on the computer used by pornographers?

Julie Amero's supporters and attorneys claim the computer was infested with adware. This is entirely possible, especially when the school's head of IT stated that the content filtering software used by the school was not functioning due to the school not maintaining the licensure on the software. The year this occurred was 2004 when adware and spyware was reported to be running rampant.

Under Section 53-21 of Connecticut law , "Any person who . . . willfully or unlawfully causes or permits any child under the age of sixteen years to be placed in such a situation that the life or limb of such child is endangered, the health of such child is likely to be injured or the morals of such child are likely to be impaired . . . shall be punished. The intent of the statute is to protect the physical health, morals and well-being of children." The law also provides that "the state must prove the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) that at the time of the incident, the alleged victim was under the age of sixteen years; and (2) that the defendant willfully or unlawfully caused or permitted the victim to be placed in a situation that endangered the child's life or limb, or was likely to injure his health or impair his morals."

On the morning of October 19, 2004. Julie Amero said she went to work at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn. After going out in the hall, leaving her seventh grade classroom for a moment, she returned to the class to find two students at her desk on the computer. The kids were looking at a website called, "new-hair-styles.com." This is supported by an analysis of the computer. Shortly after this Amero noticed new windows of the web browser opening and displaying pornographic images. She attempted to close them but when she did, another would open.

She did not turn the computer off due to a prior notification from school administration to teachers to not shut classroom computers off. She ran down the teachers lounge to try to get help. She received no help. One of the teachers actually said, " Just ignore it, it happens all the time." Later that day several children reported the incident to their parents.

When the case came to trial a computer expert named W. Herbert Horner testified for the defense that the pages were the result of spyware on the class computer. The prosecution's expert was a local police officer who disputed this and stated that time-stamped logs on the machine showing the adult images and Web pages accessed by the Web browser proved that someone intentionally visited the sites by clicking on a link or typing the address into the address into the address bar of the browser.

There is an explanation to the police officer's testimony. Web browser logs will keep records of sites accessed whether they were generated by internal pop-up serving software or clicked on by the user. The judge over the case actually barred the defense expert from presenting evidence to back these claims.

The Federal Trade Commission has been cracking down on companies and individuals accused of spreading malicious spyware to millions of computers across the world. A recent former Massachusetts school administrator petitioned the governor of Connecticut to pardon Amero and expund her conviction.

To protect your computer as much as possible from this kind of incident you should always keep your anti-spyware and anti-adware software running and updated. Of course, this may not work all the time. When someone builds a better mousetrap there is always someone building a better mouse.