Wired explains that traces of where these hijackers take you can remain on your computer, but there is no way to tell that the traces come from the hijackers rather than your own browsing:
In one case a man claims that a browser hijacker sent him to jail after compromising images of children were found on his work computer by an employer, who then reported him to law enforcement authorities. "The police raided my house on Sept. 17, 2002," said "Jack," who came to the United States from the former Soviet Union as a political refugee, and has requested that his name not be published. "Nobody gave me a chance to explain. I was told by judge and prosecutor that I will get years in prison if I go to trial. After negotiations through my lawyer I got 180 days in an adult correctional facility. I was imprisoned for 20 days and then released under the Electronic Home Monitoring scheme. I now have a felony sex-criminal record, and the court ordered me to register as a predatory sex offender for 10 years."
"I was almost fired after some sort of content-monitoring system that my ex-employer used on the network found several dozen dirty photos on my laptop," said Matthew Cortella, a sales representative based in Illinois. "I had no idea how that stuff got on my machine; I thought it'd been hacked. Eventually, thank God, IT found some program on there that they said could have caused the problem. But for eight days I was sure I'd be fired, and I was terrified. I have a family to support. Jobs aren't easy to come by these days."
"My wife and I separated for a time because she thought I was looking at porno," said Fred McFarlane, a store owner in Georgia. "We are religious people. She just couldn't be with me after she saw the pictures that were in our computer. I don't blame her. Even now, I know it's real hard for her to understand it was the computer that did it, not me."
Jack's story is the most serious and, as Wired explains, there are some discrepancies in this situation. What he says may not be entirely true, but it isn't impossible either. It's far more likely that people will have situations like Matthew's or Fred's. It is certainly a shame when anything like that occurs, but I also wonder if part of the problem isn't the stigma society still places on pornography. If, in Matthew's case, images of cars were found on his computer because he browsed car sites, would he have been in as much trouble? Only if his company bans all non-company use of the machine; otherwise, I doubt it - and that's a serious double-standard.
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