How to catch a cracker in the US?

Wed Mar 12 18:29:33 UTC 2014

There's an almost, I don't know the right word, jealous reaction to
someone asking for help like this sometimes where people speculate on
the legal success etc generally concluding failure.

There are many good reasons to try to track a criminal.

For one thing, often this is not their only criminal activity so
plausibly denying this one activity may not help them in the end. But
not if everyone throws up their hands and focuses only on the
difficulties!

Also, if they stole money or identity information and used it then
there should be a trail of that activity.

If I steal your credit card and it got used and it got used by the
person you suspect stole it for other reasons (e.g., a phishing site
was running at their IP) then that's a pretty good hint beyond just
proving the one fact (it was their IP.)

On the one hand this is not a great forum for getting this advice
because of this sort of thing, people who have little to offer in
advice start speculating on legalities etc.

OTOH, it is likely that people on this list have had first-hand
experience with this sort of thing and can usefully recommend what the
OP might do next.

I've had good and not so great experiences, but it's changed over the
years. I've seen real creeps tracked aggressively in real time with
warrants flying. I've also had LEO shout at me that they have only
very limited resources which sounded like "if they rob a congressman
call us, otherwise call your congressman and get us more budget
first!"

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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