Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torrent site

Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by LaSombra on Friday July 22, 2016 @06:42AM (#12142773)

That's not really surprising at all. When served with a subpoena they don't have much of a choice, I take.

Well, except for the iPhone breaking one.

Now, deporting a foreigner from across the ocean makes me think what would happen if, for example, had his e-mail hosted on an european provider. Would the provider be forced to comply?

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by Jtsummers on Friday July 22, 2016 @09:24AM (#12143332)

In the San Bernardino case they did not, due to FBI meddling, have a way into the phone anymore.

In this case, they had the purchase records of the individual:

  Der-Yeghiayan was able to link the email address found in the
  WHOIS lookup to an Apple email address that Vaulin purportedly
  used to operate KAT. It's this Apple account that appears to
  tie all of pieces of Vaulin's alleged involvement together.

  On July 31st 2015, records provided by Apple show that the
  me.com account was used to purchase something on iTunes. The
  logs show that the same IP address was used on the same day to
  access the KAT Facebook page. After KAT began accepting Bitcoin
  donations in 2012, $72,767 was moved into a Coinbase account in
  Vaulin's name. That Bitcoin wallet was registered with the same
  me.com email address.

Tying the email address to the person. That's what was used. A purchase record tying the email address and the IP address together. Paired with the concurrent access to the KAT Facebook account. It doesn't matter what email provider he'd been using. It was the simultaneous access from the same IP to two different accounts. One his personal and one his business that the investigators needed. It may have been harder if it hadn't been Apple (or another US provider), but not impossible, just find other services that that email address was connected to.

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Re:Apple and Facebook helped bust the world's biggest torren... by king_phil on Friday July 22, 2016 @11:05AM (#12143966)

If it was my e-mail provider (like, the one I manage, based in Germany) they could bloody try. We keep our mouths well shut until the day we're presented with a court order. And we already had some major abuse cases with foreign countries. We only complied with one (had to) where someone imported explosives and border police was... quite unhappy.

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