Theft of personal property is a crime and computer theft is no exception. It can occur even in the absence of the permanent physical removal from the possession of its rightful owner. This is often referred to as data theft. If thieves are provided, or have otherwise gained, surreptitious access to an individual's computer, they can with fairly rudimentary technical knowledge and hacking skills use several methods to bypass or decode your password protection to gain illegal access. They can then easily print or save to a USB drive whatever data they choose, copy your entire hard drive with or without conducting a password bypass, or sync your computer contents to another computer for viewing or sharing with an accomplice whenever they wish to do so. This crime also violates privacy laws and so damage recovery may be pursued by both criminal prosecution if police authorities become involved and or civil suit filed against the perpetrator by the victim.

What Is Data Theft And Distribution?

Data theft is considered the illegal copying or otherwise obtaining the private and personal information of an individual. This data may include emails, photographs, diaries, tax records, work correspondence, intellectually protected properties, calendars, bank records and other financial information, chat transcripts, social security numbers, passwords and more. This type of theft also victimizes third parties who may have private data on an individuals computer, thereby resulting from shared screen, video or chat sessions, or correspondence exchange.

Distribution occurs when computer and data thieves distribute any private stolen information belonging to an individual. If the recipient of the stolen data is aware of the crime and then views or utilizes the stolen data in any way, they become an accessory to the crime after the fact. Personal computers and their contained data are protected under privacy laws and unauthorized illegal access is a crime, even if no data is copied. Data theft is closely related to Identity Theft which occurs when an illegal acquisition of an individual's data is then used for financial gain.

If you are the victim of computer or data theft and distribution please contact us today for help.