Who's that girl? The curious case of Leah Palmer

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31710738

By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter
Mar. 4, 2015

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Ruth recently discovered that for the past three years somebody has been routinely lifting photographs of her, her family and friends from social networks, and setting up a network of fake media profiles of them - which all communicate with each other.

This person, calling themselves Leah Palmer, branded Ruth's husband a "psychotic ex" in her version of Ruth's photos and had online relationships with at least six different men, who all thought they were cyber-dating Ruth - the woman in the pictures.

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The term "catfish" is sometimes used to describe the practice of using other people's photographs when looking for relationships on the net.

The name comes from the 2010 documentary Catfish, now also an MTV series.

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Generally, people were unaware their photo was being used elsewhere, unless they found out by chance, Mr Cluley added.

"There are search engines for photos such as Tineye.com, where you can upload an image and see where it appears on the web," he said.

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When she discovered the fictional Leah was also contacting men via these profiles, Ruth was able to make contact with some of them, via Skype, with her husband at her side.

They had soon realised what had happened, Ruth said, not least because the young woman they had been faced with, who they had thought they had spoken to on the phone, had had a completely different accent.

Ruth said: "Some of these guys... they'd had online relationships with her, they'd been exchanging explicit images... I can't imagine.

"When they were talking to me, you could see it was like someone going through a break-up.

"One had ended a real-life relationship to have an online relationship with this girl who they thought was me."

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Ruth contacted the social-network companies, who she said had been quick to remove the fake profiles - but they soon sprang up again.

The police offered victim support, but as no crime had actually been committed and the person was not using Ruth's full name, they could only file her case "for information".

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"I don't have a public profile or pages. I never had them because I am fully aware that there are people out there who can go on pages and do this sort of thing.

"I've been trying to do my own detective work, and the only thing I can think is that maybe when I first joined Instagram perhaps I had an open profile very briefly."

The obvious uncomfortable thought is that "Leah" is somebody Ruth knows.

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Copyright lawyer Adam Rendle said Ruth's recourse may be through the photographs that had caused the problem in the first place.

"The imposter will not own the copyright in the photos and videos of the victim that he or she is using - the person who took them is likely to," he said.

"The victim could therefore try to use the copyright to stop the imposter using that material.

"Platforms will typically respond to takedown requests based on copyright."

[If someone steals music for free from the internet, it would be hypocritical to use the copyright law to protect the photos they post.]

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